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Complex thermoelectric materials.

G. Jeffrey Snyder, +1 more
- 01 Feb 2008 - 
- Vol. 7, Iss: 2, pp 105-114
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TLDR
A new era of complex thermoelectric materials is approaching because of modern synthesis and characterization techniques, particularly for nanoscale materials, and the strategies used to improve the thermopower and reduce the thermal conductivity are reviewed.
Abstract
Thermoelectric materials, which can generate electricity from waste heat or be used as solid-state Peltier coolers, could play an important role in a global sustainable energy solution. Such a development is contingent on identifying materials with higher thermoelectric efficiency than available at present, which is a challenge owing to the conflicting combination of material traits that are required. Nevertheless, because of modern synthesis and characterization techniques, particularly for nanoscale materials, a new era of complex thermoelectric materials is approaching. We review recent advances in the field, highlighting the strategies used to improve the thermopower and reduce the thermal conductivity.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Cooling, heating, generating power, and recovering waste heat with thermoelectric systems.

Lon E. Bell
- 12 Sep 2008 - 
TL;DR: Thermoelectric materials are solid-state energy converters whose combination of thermal, electrical, and semiconductor properties allows them to be used to convert waste heat into electricity or electrical power directly into cooling and heating.
Journal ArticleDOI

Ultralow thermal conductivity and high thermoelectric figure of merit in SnSe crystals

TL;DR: An unprecedented ZT of 2.6 ± 0.3 at 923 K is reported in SnSe single crystals measured along the b axis of the room-temperature orthorhombic unit cell, which highlights alternative strategies to nanostructuring for achieving high thermoelectric performance.
Journal ArticleDOI

Prospects of Colloidal Nanocrystals for Electronic and Optoelectronic Applications

TL;DR: Nanocrystals (NCs) discussed in this Review are tiny crystals of metals, semiconductors, and magnetic material consisting of hundreds to a few thousand atoms each that are among the hottest research topics of the last decades.
Journal ArticleDOI

High-performance bulk thermoelectrics with all-scale hierarchical architectures

TL;DR: It is shown that heat-carrying phonons with long mean free paths can be scattered by controlling and fine-tuning the mesoscale architecture of nanostructured thermoelectric materials, and an increase in ZT beyond the threshold of 2 highlights the role of, and need for, multiscale hierarchical architecture in controlling phonon scattering in bulk thermoeLECTrics.
Journal ArticleDOI

Enhancement of Thermoelectric Efficiency in PbTe by Distortion of the Electronic Density of States

TL;DR: A successful implementation through the use of the thallium impurity levels in lead telluride (PbTe) is reported, which results in a doubling of zT in p-type PbTe to above 1.5 at 773 kelvin.
References
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BookDOI

CRC Handbook of Thermoelectrics

TL;DR: In this article, Rowe et al. proposed a method for reducing the thermal conductivity of a thermoelectric generator by reducing the carrier concentration of the generator, which was shown to improve the generator's performance.
Journal ArticleDOI

Enhanced thermoelectric performance of rough silicon nanowires

TL;DR: In this article, the authors report the electrochemical synthesis of large-area, wafer-scale arrays of rough Si nanowires that are 20-300 nm in diameter.
Journal ArticleDOI

New Directions for Low-Dimensional Thermoelectric Materials**

TL;DR: In this article, the ability to achieve a simultaneous increase in the power factor and a decrease in the thermal conductivity of the same nanocomposite sample and for transport in the same direction is discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Effect of quantum-well structures on the thermoelectric figure of merit.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed to use quantum-well superlattice structures to enhance the performance of thermoelectric coolers and showed that layering has the potential to increase significantly the figure of merit of a highly anisotropic material.
Journal Article

Enhanced Thermoelectric Performance in Rough Silicon Nanowires

TL;DR: Electrochemical synthesis of large-area, wafer-scale arrays of rough Si nanowires that are 20–300 nm in diameter show promise as high-performance, scalable thermoelectric materials.
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