Abstract
Ag–Sb–Te alloys are important for thermoelectric applications. Fifty-one Ag–Sb–Te ternary alloys wereprepared, and their primary solidification phases were analyzed. The liquidus troughs of the liquidusprojection of the ternary Ag–Sb–Te system are determined based on the experimental results and thephasediagramsofthethreebinaryconstituentsystems.Thereare13primarysolidificationphaseregions.In addition to the three terminal solid solution phases and nine binary compounds, there is one ternarycompound, AgSbTe2. A unique microstructure with bright spherical phases uniformly dispersed in amatrixcausedbyamiscibilitygapintheliquidphaseisfoundinthe-Ag2 Teprimarysolidificationphaseregime.AveryfinemicrostructurewithnanometersizeAg2 Teisalsoobserved,resultingfromtheclassIreaction,liquid=+Ag2 Te+AgSbTe2,at496.5◦C,andtheliquidcompositionofAg–40.0at%Sb–36.0at%Te