Retarding moisture-induced chemical degradation of Yttrium Tellurides by tailoring grain boundary chemistry
Kyuseon Jang, Jamil Ur Rahman, Su-Hyun Yoo, Chanwon Jung, Eric Woods, Ruben Bueno-Villoro, Kornelius Nielsch, Christina Scheu, Yonghyuk Lee, Pyuck-Pa Choi, Ran He, Siyuan Zhang · 2026
Read Retarding moisture-induced chemical degradation of Yttrium Tellurides by tailoring grain boundary chemistry by Kyuseon Jang, Jamil Ur Rahman, Su-Hyun Yoo, Chanwon Jung, Eric Woods, Ruben Bueno-Villoro, Kornelius Nielsch, Christina Scheu, Yonghyuk Lee, Pyuck-Pa Choi, Ran He, Siyuan Zhang (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13519032.txt.
Description
Kyuseon Jang and a large team show in 2026 that seasoning the grain boundaries of a thermoelectric material can stop it rotting in damp air. Yttrium telluride, Y2Te3, promises waste-heat conversion, yet water sneaks along the seams between its crystals, oxidizing the inside into breakdown products. Microscope and atom probe work traced that seep path at first hand.
Adding just 1 atomic percent of bismuth changed the story, because bismuth drifts to the seams and alters their chemistry. Math showed why bismuth gathers there and how the local electronic setting then resists attack. Jang's team proposes seam chemistry design as a general shield for next-generation thermoelectrics, with no extra coatings needed.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Kyuseon Jang, Jamil Ur Rahman, Su-Hyun Yoo, Chanwon Jung, Eric Woods, Ruben Bueno-Villoro, Kornelius Nielsch, Christina Scheu, Yonghyuk Lee, Pyuck-Pa Choi, Ran He, Siyuan Zhang |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 59882 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |