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Future Trends in Thermoelectric Performance and Applications of Materials

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Electronic Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 March 2023) | Viewed by 5659

Special Issue Editor

Institute of Physics (IA), RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
Interests: thermoelectric materials; dislocations; grain boundaries; nanoprecipitation; atom probe tomography; correlative microscopy

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Exactly 200 years ago, in 1821, Thomas J. Seebeck discovered the Seebeck effect, which opened a new door to generating electricity by scavenging waste heat, providing a promising carbon-neutral solution to the energy and environmental crisis. With the development of rigorous theory, sophisticated material synthesis techniques, and advanced characterization methods, in the past two centuries, and especially in the last three decades, thermoelectric materials have witnessed prominent improvement. Many new compounds have been discovered, motivated by the novel concept of “phonon glass electron crystal” and unconventional chemical bonding mechanisms. The thermoelectric figure-of-merit, i.e., zT, of iconic materials such as Bi2Te3, PbTe, and SiGe has also been greatly improved by introducing hierarchical microstructures, including dislocations, grain boundaries, and nanoprecipitates. In addition, energy band engineering, e.g., the band convergence, the band distortion, and the band anisotropy, has led to the optimization of power factors in a variety of materials systems. Aiming at the practical application of thermoelectric technology, more research has been undertaken in the design and fabrication of thermoelectric devices in recent years, but many scientific and engineering problems still need to be solved. We think it is high time to collect some high-quality research work or reviews to highlight the cutting-edge development of thermoelectric materials and to discuss the future applications of thermoelectric technology.

In this Special Issue, we welcome all kinds of research on thermoelectrics, including, but not limited to, the discovery of new thermoelectric materials by high-throughput screening, the optimization of thermoelectric properties by energy band and defects engineering, the advanced characterization of  microstructures in thermoelectrics, and the design and fabrication of thermoelectric devices.

Dr. Yuan Yu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • thermoelectric
  • energy band engineering
  • dislocation
  • grain boundary
  • precipitate
  • advanced microscopy
  • thermoelectric device

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 1706 KiB  
Article
Thermoelectric Properties of Co-Substituted Al–Pd–Re Icosahedral Quasicrystals
by Yoshiki Takagiwa
Materials 2022, 15(19), 6816; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15196816 - 30 Sep 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1121
Abstract
The practical application of quasicrystals (QCs) as thermoelectric materials makes icosahedral (i-) Al–Pd–Re QC attractive because of its moderate electrical conductivity (~280 Ω−1 cm−1), relatively high Seebeck coefficient (~100 μV K−1), and low thermal conductivity (~1.3 [...] Read more.
The practical application of quasicrystals (QCs) as thermoelectric materials makes icosahedral (i-) Al–Pd–Re QC attractive because of its moderate electrical conductivity (~280 Ω−1 cm−1), relatively high Seebeck coefficient (~100 μV K−1), and low thermal conductivity (~1.3 W m−1 K−1) at room temperature. To develop a thermoelectric Π-shaped power generation module, we need both p- and n-type thermoelectric materials. In this work, we aimed to develop an n-type i-Al–Pd–Re-based QC and investigated the effect of Co substitution for Re on the thermoelectric properties, i.e., the electron-doping effect. We synthesized dense bulk samples with nominal compositions of Al71Pd20(Re1−xCox)9 (x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5) via arc-melting, annealing, and sintering methods. We found that Co can produce n-type carriers in dilute substitution amounts of x = 0.1 and 0.2; however, the Seebeck coefficient at 300 K showed an n- to p-type transition with increasing x. This indicates that a simple rigid-band approximation is not applicable for i-Al–Pd–Re QC, which makes it difficult to synthesize an n-type i-Al–Pd–Re-based QC. Although the thermal conductivity was reduced from 1.28 (x = 0) to 1.08 W m−1 K−1 (x = 0.3) at 373 K by lowering of the electron thermal conductivity (electrical conductivity) and the alloying effect via Co substitution, the dimensionless figure of merit was not enhanced because of lowering of the power factor for all samples. The elastic moduli of i-Al–Pd–Re QC decreased by Co substitution, indicating that i-Al–Pd–Re-Co QC had a more ionic and brittle character. Full article
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7 pages, 1865 KiB  
Communication
Enhanced N-Type Bismuth-Telluride-Based Thermoelectric Fibers via Thermal Drawing and Bridgman Annealing
by Min Sun, Pengyu Zhang, Qingmin Li, Guowu Tang, Ting Zhang, Dongdan Chen and Qi Qian
Materials 2022, 15(15), 5331; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15155331 - 3 Aug 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1616
Abstract
N-type bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3) based thermoelectric (TE) fibers were fabricated by thermal drawing and Bridgman annealing, and the influence of Bridgman annealing on the TE properties of n-type Bi2Te3-based TE fibers was studied. The Bridgman [...] Read more.
N-type bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3) based thermoelectric (TE) fibers were fabricated by thermal drawing and Bridgman annealing, and the influence of Bridgman annealing on the TE properties of n-type Bi2Te3-based TE fibers was studied. The Bridgman annealing enhanced the electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient because of increasing crystalline orientation and decreasing detrimental elemental enrichment. The TE performance of n-type Bi2Te3-based TE fibers was improved significantly by enhancing the power factor. Hence the power factor increased from 0.14 to 0.93 mW/mK2, and the figure-of-merit value is from 0.11 to 0.43 at ~300 K, respectively. Full article
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10 pages, 30147 KiB  
Article
High Thermoelectric Performance Achieved in Sb-Doped GeTe by Manipulating Carrier Concentration and Nanoscale Twin Grains
by Chao Li, Haili Song, Zongbei Dai, Zhenbo Zhao, Chengyan Liu, Hengquan Yang, Chengqiang Cui and Lei Miao
Materials 2022, 15(2), 406; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15020406 - 6 Jan 2022
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 1728
Abstract
Lead-free and eco-friendly GeTe shows promising mid-temperature thermoelectric applications. However, a low Seebeck coefficient due to its intrinsically high hole concentration induced by Ge vacancies, and a relatively high thermal conductivity result in inferior thermoelectric performance in pristine GeTe. Extrinsic dopants such as [...] Read more.
Lead-free and eco-friendly GeTe shows promising mid-temperature thermoelectric applications. However, a low Seebeck coefficient due to its intrinsically high hole concentration induced by Ge vacancies, and a relatively high thermal conductivity result in inferior thermoelectric performance in pristine GeTe. Extrinsic dopants such as Sb, Bi, and Y could play a crucial role in regulating the hole concentration of GeTe because of their different valence states as cations and high solubility in GeTe. Here we investigate the thermoelectric performance of GeTe upon Sb doping, and demonstrate a high maximum zT value up to 1.88 in Ge0.90Sb0.10Te as a result of the significant suppression in thermal conductivity while maintaining a high power factor. The maintained high power factor is due to the markable enhancement in the Seebeck coefficient, which could be attributed to the significant suppression of hole concentration and the valence band convergence upon Sb doping, while the low thermal conductivity stems from the suppression of electronic thermal conductivity due to the increase in electrical resistivity and the lowering of lattice thermal conductivity through strengthening the phonon scattering by lattice distortion, dislocations, and twin boundaries. The excellent thermoelectric performance of Ge0.90Sb0.10Te shows good reproducibility and thermal stability. This work confirms that Ge0.90Sb0.10Te is a superior thermoelectric material for practical application. Full article
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