Thermoelectric (TE) generators that efficiently recycle a large portion of waste heat will be an important complementary energy technology in the future. While many efficient TE materials exist in the lower temperature region, few are efficient at high temperatures. Here, we present the high temperature properties of high-entropy alloys (HEAs), as a potential new class of high temperature TE materials. We show that their TE properties can be controlled significantly by changing the valence electron concentration (VEC) of the system with appropriate substitutional elements. Both the electrical and thermal transport properties in this system were found to decrease with a lower VEC number. Overall, the large microstructural complexity and lower average VEC in these types of alloys can potentially be used to lower both the total and the lattice thermal conductivity. These findings highlight the possibility to exploit HEAs as a new class of future high temperature TE materials. V

The two alkali silanides ASiH3 (A = K and Rb) were investigated by means of quasielastic neutron scattering, both below and above the order–disorder phase transition occurring at around 275–300 K. Measurements upon heating show that there is a large change in the dynamics on going through the phase transition, whereas measurements upon cooling reveal a strong hysteresis due to undercooling of the disordered phase. The results show that the dynamics is associated with rotational diffusion of SiH3 – anions, adequately modeled by H-jumps among 24 different jump locations radially distributed around the Si atom. The average relaxation time between successive jumps is of the order of subpicoseconds and exhibits a weak temperature dependence with a small difference in activation energy between the two materials, 39(1) meV for KSiH3 and 33(1) meV for RbSiH3. The pronounced SiH3 – dynamics explains the high entropy observed in the disordered phase resulting in the low entropy variation for hydrogen absorption/desorption and hence the origin of these materials’ favorable hydrogen storage properties.

The first examples of a new class of gallium hydride clusters with direct Ga-Ga bonds and common hydrocarbon structures are reported. Neutron powder diffraction was used to find a Ga[GaH(3)](4)(5-) cluster ion with a neopentane structure in a novel cubic structure type of Rb(8)Ga(5)H(15). Another cluster ion with a polyethylene structure, [GaH(2)](n)(n-), was found in a second novel (RbGaH(2))(n) hydride. These hydrocarbon-like clusters in gallium hydride materials have significant implications for the discovery of hydrides for hydrogen storage as well as for interesting electronic properties.

The hydrogenous Zintl-phase Cs10H[Ga3H8]3 containing propane-like polyanions [Ga3H(D)8](3-) was successfully synthesized by direct hydrogenation of a 1:1 Cs/Ga metal mixture and characterized by powder X-ray and neutron diffraction. The charge of the polyanions is balanced by two different species of cations, hydrogen-centered octahedra [H(D)Cs6](5+) and isolated Cs(+). The structure crystallizes in the hexagonal space group P63/mcm (193) with the cell parameters a = 11.1108(3) Å, c = 18.2149(5) Å, Z = 2.

The crystal structure of a novel open-framework gallogermanate, SU-66 {|(C 6 H 18 N 2 ) 18 (H 2 O) 32 |[Ga 4.8 Ge 87.2 O 208 ]}, has been solved from laboratory X-ray powder diffraction (XPD) data by using a direct-space structure solution algorithm and local structural information obtained from infrared (IR) spectroscopy. IR studies on 18 known germanates revealed that the bands in their IR spectra were characteristic of the different composite building units (CBUs) present in the structures. By comparing the bands corresponding to Ge-O vibrations in the IR spectra of SU-66 with those of the 18 known structures with different CBUs, the CBU of SU-66 could be identified empirically as the Ge 10 (O,OH) 27 cluster (Ge 10 ). The unit cell and space group (extinction symbol P--a ; a = 14.963, b = 31.593, c = 18.759 Å ) were determined initially from the XPD pattern and then confirmed by selected-area electron diffraction. The structure of SU-66 was solved from the XPD data using parallel tempering as implemented in FOX [Favre-Nicolin & Č erný (2002). J. Appl. Cryst. 35, 734-743] by assuming P2 1 ma symmetry and two Ge 10 clusters in the asymmetric unit. Rietveld refinement of the resulting structure using synchrotron XPD data showed the framework structure to be correct and the space group to be Pmma. The framework has extra-large (26-ring) onedimensional channels and a very low framework density of 10.1 Ge/Ga atoms per 1000 Å 3 . SU-66, with 55 framework atoms in the asymmetric unit, is one of the more complicated framework structures solved from XPD data. Indeed, 98% of the reflections were overlapping in the XPD pattern used for structure solution.Tests on other open-framework germanates (SU-62, SU-65, SU-74, PKU-12 and ITQ-37) for which the XPD data, unit cell, space group and IR spectra were available proved to be equally successful. In a more complex case (SU-72) the combination of FOX and powder charge flipping was required for structure solution.