General strategies to improve thermoelectric performance with an emphasis on tin and germanium chalcogenides as thermoelectric materials

Abstract

Thermoelectric (TE) materials have attracted tremendous research interests over the past few decades, due to their application in power generation technology from waste heat, almost without producing any pollution in...

Ultralow Thermal Conductivity and High Thermoelectric Performance of γ-GeSe: Effects of Dimensionality and Thickness

“…Metal chalcogenide materials have a low electronegativity difference, leading to weak covalent bonding in the material, thus increasing the power factor. The high atomic weight also lowers the thermal conductivity. − Further, there is a possibility of doping these materials with n- or p-type elements to improve TE properties. Another interesting property is that these materials can exhibit different phases (structural forms) with different dimension scales.…”

“…Among them, the Pb-chalcogenide materials have been found to show remarkable TE properties for application in the mid- and high-temperature ranges. , However, due to the environmental concern associated with handling Pb, investigation of the Pb-free chalcogenides has been encouraged. Chalcogenides based on Sn and Ge (SnS, SnSe, SnTe, GeS, GeSe, GeTe) are also considered promising TE materials . SnP 3 -based materials show Seebeck and thermal conductivities of 907 μV K –1 and 3.46 W m –1 K –1 , respectively .…”

Optical and Thermoelectric Behavior of Phagraphene with Site‐Specific B‐N Co‐Doping

“…A material with $$ZT\nobreakspace \ge 1$$ can be regarded as a good TE material as well as suitable for device engineering. [ 73 ]…”

“…A material with ZT ≥ 1 can be regarded as a good TE material as well as suitable for device engineering. [73] In order to explore reliable TE variations, electronic band structure of the material is the key factor. In this study, electronic band structure using GGA-PBE approximation has been utilized to explore TE variations.…”

Processing High-Performance Thermoelectric Materials in a Green Way: A Proof of Concept in Cold Sintered PbTe0.94Se0.06

“…The TE performance of the thermoelectric material depends on the dimensionless figure-of-merit, ZT = σ S 2 T /κ, where σ, S , κ, and T are the electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity, and absolute temperature, respectively. Currently, significant improvements of ZT values reaching 2–3 have been achieved in conventional as well as state-of-the-art TE materials, including lead chalcogenides, , silver antimony telluride, , skutterudites, , selenides, , and so on. Except for a few types of single crystals, most of these advanced TE materials are prepared on the basis of the powder processing-sintering protocol due to the obvious merits in suppressing thermal conductivity and scalable production.…”