Future Trends in Thermoelectric Performance and Applications of Materials

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

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