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High thermoelectric performance by resonant dopant indium in nanostructured SnTe

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TLDR
This work studied the thermoelectric properties of nanostructured SnTe with different dopants, and found indium-doped SnTe showed extraordinarily large Seebeck coefficients that cannot be explained properly by the conventional two-valence band model.
Abstract
From an environmental perspective, lead-free SnTe would be preferable for solid-state waste heat recovery if its thermoelectric figure-of-merit could be brought close to that of the lead-containing chalcogenides. In this work, we studied the thermoelectric properties of nanostructured SnTe with different dopants, and found indium-doped SnTe showed extraordinarily large Seebeck coefficients that cannot be explained properly by the conventional two-valence band model. We attributed this enhancement of Seebeck coefficients to resonant levels created by the indium impurities inside the valence band, supported by the first-principles simulations. This, together with the lower thermal conductivity resulting from the decreased grain size by ball milling and hot pressing, improved both the peak and average nondimensional figure-of-merit (ZT) significantly. A peak ZT of ∼1.1 was obtained in 0.25 atom % In-doped SnTe at about 873 K.

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Rationally Designing High-Performance Bulk Thermoelectric Materials

TL;DR: This review describes the recent advances in designing high-performance bulk thermoelectric materials and highlights the decoupling of the electron and phonon transport through coherent interface, matrix/precipitate electronic bands alignment, and compositionally alloyed nanostructures.
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Compromise and Synergy in High-Efficiency Thermoelectric Materials.

TL;DR: Novel concepts and paradigms are described here that have emerged, targeting superior TE materials and higher TE performance, including band convergence, "phonon-glass electron-crystal", multiscale phonon scattering, resonant states, anharmonicity, etc.
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Advanced Thermoelectric Design: From Materials and Structures to Devices

TL;DR: This review aims to comprehensively summarize the state-of-the-art strategies for the realization of high-performance thermoelectric materials and devices by establishing the links between synthesis, structural characteristics, properties, underlying chemistry and physics.
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Thermoelectric materials: Energy conversion between heat and electricity

TL;DR: In this article, a review of thermoelectric properties, applications and parameter relationships is presented, including modifications of electronic band structures and band convergence to enhance Seebeck coefficients; nanostructuring and all-scale hierarchical architecturing to reduce the lattice thermal conductivity.
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High Performance Thermoelectric Materials: Progress and Their Applications

TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on major novel strategies to achieve high-performance thermoelectric (TE) materials and their applications, and present a review of these strategies.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

QUANTUM ESPRESSO: a modular and open-source software project for quantum simulations of materials

TL;DR: QUANTUM ESPRESSO as discussed by the authors is an integrated suite of computer codes for electronic-structure calculations and materials modeling, based on density functional theory, plane waves, and pseudopotentials (norm-conserving, ultrasoft, and projector-augmented wave).
Journal ArticleDOI

Self-interaction correction to density-functional approximations for many-electron systems

TL;DR: In this paper, the self-interaction correction (SIC) of any density functional for the ground-state energy is discussed. But the exact density functional is strictly selfinteraction-free (i.e., orbitals demonstrably do not selfinteract), but many approximations to it, including the local spin-density (LSD) approximation for exchange and correlation, are not.
Journal ArticleDOI

High-Thermoelectric Performance of Nanostructured Bismuth Antimony Telluride Bulk Alloys

TL;DR: Electrical transport measurements, coupled with microstructure studies and modeling, show that the ZT improvement is the result of low thermal conductivity caused by the increased phonon scattering by grain boundaries and defects, which makes these materials useful for cooling and power generation.
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