Investigation of the effect of Ga doping on the thermoelectric properties of the AlPdMn quasicrystalline system

Due to their inherently low thermal conductivity, quasicrystals show potential for thermoelectric applications. The AlPdMn quasicrystalline system has reasonable electrical conductivity and high thermopower. A quaternary variant of the ternary icosahedral Al-Pd-Mn system was prepared in order to investigate the effect of a fourth element (in this case Ga) on the electrical resistivity, thermoelectric power and thermal conductivity. Single grain samples of Al/sub 67/Ga/sub 4/Pd/sub 21/Mn/sub 8/ were prepared via a flux-growth technique and cut into several pieces. Thermal and electrical transport properties were measured on each sample over a broad range of temperature, 10 K