In this review we discuss considerations regarding the common techniques used for measuring thermoelectric transport properties necessary for calculating the thermoelectric figure of merit, zT.Advice for improving the data quality in Seebeck coefficient, electrical resistivity, and thermal conductivity (from flash diffusivity and heat capacity) measurements are given together with methods for identifying possible erroneous data. Measurement of the Hall coefficient and calculation of the charge carrier concentration and mobility is also included due to its importance for understanding materials. It is not intended to be a complete record or comparison of all the different techniques employed in thermoelectrics. Rather, by providing an overview of common techniques and their inherent difficulties it is an aid to new researchers or students in the field. The focus is mainly on high temperature measurements but low temperature techniques are also briefly discussed. Measurement guide for authors and reviewersMeasurements should always be repeatable on the same sample, and on new samples produced in the manner described. Thermoelectric effects are steady-state effects so any time dependence or hysteresis is indication that phenomena outside thermoelectric effects are at play. Materials with chemical oxidants/ reductants incorporated are likely to contain unstable internal voltages not due to thermoelectric effects. Unconventional samples or measurement methods deserve reexamination of assumptions. AccuracyTrue accuracy is not represented by a single heating curve from one sample, even with error bars representing instrument precision. Showing heating and cooling data and multiple samples gives a better indication of measurement variability for a typical type of sample. Anisotropy, cracks and inhomogeneities can lead to large variation in measurements. One unusual data point or sample outside the trend, particularly at temperatures just prior to decomposition, usually indicates a problem in sample or measurement. Unusual resultsTypical thermoelectric materials behave like heavily doped semiconductors with thermopower (absolute value of Seebeck coefficient) of less than 300 mV K À1 , resistivity of 0.1-10 mU cm, and are optimized when electronic contribution to the thermal conductivity is about 1/2 the total thermal conductivity. Extraordinary results should be checked by extra means. Unusual results can be caused by bad contacts, thermocouples that have broken, chemically reacted, or simply dried out of calibration. Exceptional resultsReported values of zT > 1 or in unexpected materials receive extra attention from reviewers who may ask for additional conrmation. Convincing measurements may need to be performed on the same sample along the same direction and be repeatable with other samples and measurement methods. There is no official record keeping for claimed or veried zT values. Several papers, patents and press releases have claimed extraordinarily high zT but most have been forgotten over time and likely resul...

Measurements and modeling of electronic transport properties of n-type Ag 2+x Se suggest that this material could have a thermoelectric figure of merit zT greater than 1 at 300 K and above. The exceptional performance can be traced to the exceptionally high mobility, higher than other optimized thermoelectric materials. Although zT decreases at high temperature because of a transition to a phase with high carrier concentration, our model indicates that reducing the carrier concentration will lead to high thermoelectric performance at room temperature for cooling applications as well as up to 600 K for waste heat recovery.

PbTe is an important thermoelectric material for power generation applications due its high conversion efficiency and reliability. Its extraordinary thermoelectric performance is attributed to band convergence of the light L and heavy Σ bands. However, the temperature at which these bands converge is disputed. In this letter, we provide direct experimental evidence combined with ab initio calculations that confirm an increasing optical gap up to 673 K and predict a band convergence temperature of 700 K, much higher than previous measurements showing saturation and band convergence at 450 K.

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The γ-α transition in Ce 0.8 La 0.1 Th 0.1 is measured as a function of applied magnetic field using both resistivity and magnetization. The γ-α transition temperature decreases with increasing magnetic field, reaching zero temperature at around 56 T. The magnetic-field dependence of the transition temperature is quantitatively reproduced by a model that invokes the field and temperature dependence of the entropy of the 4f-electron moments of the γ phase.

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In this letter, we report the high-temperature thermoelectric properties of Ag2Se0.5Te0.5. We find that this particular composition displays very low thermal conductivity and competitive thermoelectric performance. Specifically, in the temperature region 520 K ≤ T ≤ 620 K, we observe non-hysteretic behavior between the heating and cooling curves and zT values ranging from 1.2 to 0.8. Higher zT values are observed at lower temperatures on cooling. Our results suggest that this alloy is conducive to high thermoelectric performance in the intermediate temperature range, and thus deserves further investigation.

α-Mg 3 Sb 2 is an excellent thermoelectric material through excess-Mg addition and n-type impurity doping to overcome its persistent p-type behavior. It is generally believed that the role of excess-Mg is to compensate the single Mg vacancy to realize n-type carrier conduction. In contrary to this belief, the present work indicates that the role of excess-Mg is to compensate the electronic charge of defect complex (V Mg(2) + Mg I ) 1− . The Mg solubility in α-Mg 3+x Sb 2 is quite small when only considering a single defect, but it enlarged up to x = 0.011 with the defect complex (V Mg(2) + Mg I ) 1− , which is more reasonable as supported by experiments. Under Mg-poor conditions, V Mg(1) 2− and V Mg(2) 2− are the dominant defects, and their concentrations can reach (1.05−1.18) × 10 19 cm −3 at 1200 K. Under Mg-rich conditions, (V Mg(2) + Mg I ) 1− is found to be the dominant reason for strong p-type behavior, and their concentrations can reach as high as 3.5 × 10 20 cm −3 , which shifts the Fermi level closer to the valence band maximum. The predicted carrier concentrations in the range 10 17 −10 20 cm −3 are in the same range found experimentally for pure p-type α-Mg 3 Sb 2 .