Development and Characterization of High Performance Thermoelectric Materials
A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Materials".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 February 2024) | Viewed by 1728
Special Issue Editors
Interests: thermoelectric materials; superconductivity; magnetic materials and magnetism; thin films using ALD (MLD)
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Thermoelectric (TE) materials can directly convert heat into electricity. The process is eco-friendly, increases the sustainability of energy resources, and offers an alternative that can be implemented to alleviate the emerging energy crisis. Another very important application of TE materials is the replacement of compression-based refrigeration with solid-state Peltier coolers. Peltier coolers are used to generate refrigeration, with no moving parts or dangerous chemicals. Intriguingly, most TE materials show similar electronic features such as combinations of light and heavy elements, narrow bulk band gap along with conducting surface states. The heat-to-electricity conversion efficiency of a TE material is governed by the dimensionless figure of merit (ZT = (σS2/κ)T), where T is absolute temperature, σ is electrical conductivity, S is the Seebeck coefficient, and κ is thermal conductivity (it is the superposition of the electronic part, κe, and the lattice part, κl (κ = κe + κl). A high value of ZT can be obtained by increasing the power factor (σS2) and decreasing κ. However, this is not very easy because transport coefficients are interrelated and cannot be controlled independently. σ, S, and κe are mainly associated with the electronic part of the material and κl is related to the lattice. Typically, the highest ZT values are not obtained in insulators (large S) or metals (large σ), but rather in semiconductors with carrier concentrations between 1019 and 1020 cm-3. The current strategies for enhancing ZT are based on decoupling the electronic and lattice (phononic) systems and optimizing them separately. This includes (a) enhancement of TE power factor through band-engineering: quantum confinement of carriers, carrier energy filtering, and modulation doping (b) reduction of lattice thermal conductivity: using high-entropy alloying, quantum confinement of phonons, variable ion doping, and exotic lattice rattling (complex and cage compounds). The goal of the Special Issue “Development and Characterization of High-Performance Thermoelectric Materials” is to highlight the key challenges associated with the design of new materials, and to underline the recent advances in the synthesis and characterization of high-efficiency TE materials. This Special Issue welcomes original research papers (experimental, theoretical, and modelling) on new thermoelectric compounds, structure–property relationships, bulk and thin-film oxides, chalcogenides, oxychalcogenides, skutterudite materials, alloys, and intermetallic compounds. We also welcome research papers on flexible organic and polymer TE materials, organic and inorganic hybrid thin-film TE materials, multilayers, and nanomaterials.
Dr. Girish Chandra Tewari
Dr. Tripurari Sharan Tripathi
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- thermoelectric materials
- structural property relationship
- strongly correlated electronic system
- phonon-glass electron crystal
- flexible TE materials
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