Recently, the research team led by Prof. Wu Jinsong from the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing at Wuhan University of Technology has made significant progress in the field of ductile thermoelectric materials. Relevant findings, entitled “Room-temperature plasticity in Ag₂Te induced by Ag ions hopping”, have been published in Nature Communications. The State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing is the primary affiliation of the corresponding author, with Prof. Wu Jinsong as the corresponding author, and doctoral students Guo An’an and Liu Keke as co-first authors.

Flexible semiconductors have exhibited great potential in the development of bendable thermoelectric materials and wearable electronic devices. However, due to the structural impact caused by internal covalent bonds and ionic bonds, most inorganic semiconductors show high brittleness at room temperature, limiting their applications in ductile devices. Therefore, it has been a long-standing challenge to enhance the plasticity of inorganic semiconductors while maintaining their high-performance.

This research centers on Ag₂Te, a high-performance near-room-temperature thermoelectric material. By in-situ scanning/transmission electron microscopy (S/TEM), the research team directly observes a new deformation mechanism in Ag₂Te, namely ionic-hop-mediated domain rotation. The research results show that through stress-driven, the hopping of Ag ions to adjacent vacancies stabilizes the deformed Te-sublattice and facilitates a coordinated ~92.2° lattice rotation that accommodates substantial plastic strain. This mechanism preserves long-range crystallinity and excellent room-temperature plasticity in Ag₂Te, with an average tensile strain of over 12%.

Figure 1  The tensile ductility of Ag₂Te at room temperature

Figure 2  The domain transition in Ag₂Te under stress

Figure 3  Atomic mechanism of the domain transition in Ag₂Te

Figure 4  DFT calculation of ions migration and diffusion coefficients in Ag₂Te

Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69298-z

Written by: Wu Jinsong, Huang Linglin

Rewritten by: Mei Mengqi

Edited by: Li Huihui, Li Tiantian

Source: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis