TY - JOUR
T1 - High performance bulk thermoelectrics via a panoscopic approach
AU - He, Jiaqing
AU - Kanatzidis, Mercouri G.
AU - Dravid, Vinayak P.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported as part of the Center for Revolutionary Materials for Solid State Energy Conversion, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0001054. This contribution was also supported in part by the startup of South University of Science and Technology of China (J.H.).
PY - 2013/5
Y1 - 2013/5
N2 - One of the intellectual challenges for next generation thermoelectric materials revolves around the synthesis and fabrication of hierarchically organized microstructures that do not appreciably compromise the innate high power factor of the chosen thermoelectric system, but significantly reduce lattice thermal conductivity to enhance the overall figure of merit, ZT. An effective emerging strategy is to introduce nanostructures into bulk thermoelectric materials, which allow for diverse phonon scattering mechanisms to reduce thermal conductivity. In this review, we present key examples to show the intricate but tractable relationship across all relevant length-scales between various microstructural attributes (point, line, interfacial and mesoscale defects; as well as associated elastic and plastic strain) and lattice thermal conductivity in systems based on PbTe matrices. We emphasize the need for an overarching panoscopic approach that enables specific design strategies for the next generation of thermoelectric materials.
AB - One of the intellectual challenges for next generation thermoelectric materials revolves around the synthesis and fabrication of hierarchically organized microstructures that do not appreciably compromise the innate high power factor of the chosen thermoelectric system, but significantly reduce lattice thermal conductivity to enhance the overall figure of merit, ZT. An effective emerging strategy is to introduce nanostructures into bulk thermoelectric materials, which allow for diverse phonon scattering mechanisms to reduce thermal conductivity. In this review, we present key examples to show the intricate but tractable relationship across all relevant length-scales between various microstructural attributes (point, line, interfacial and mesoscale defects; as well as associated elastic and plastic strain) and lattice thermal conductivity in systems based on PbTe matrices. We emphasize the need for an overarching panoscopic approach that enables specific design strategies for the next generation of thermoelectric materials.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.mattod.2013.05.004
DO - 10.1016/j.mattod.2013.05.004
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84880099697
VL - 16
SP - 166
EP - 176
JO - Materials Today
JF - Materials Today
SN - 1369-7021
IS - 5
ER -