Strategies for optimizing the thermoelectricity of PbTe alloys

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/27/4/047306

Abstract

The thermoelectric materials have been considered as a potential candidate for the new power generation technology based on their reversible heat and electricity conversion. Lead telluride (PbTe) is regarded as an excellent mid-temperature thermoelectric material due to its suitable intrinsic thermoelectric properties. So tremendous efforts have been done to improve the thermoelectric performance of PbTe, and figures of merit, zT > 2.0, have been reported. Main strategies for optimizing the thermoelectric performance have been focused as the main line of this review. The band engineering and phonon scattering engineering as two main effective strategies are systemically summarized here. The band engineering, like band convergence, resonant levels, and band flatting have been addressed in improving the power factor. Additionally, phonon scattering engineerings, such as atomic-scale, nano-scale, meso-scale, and multi-scale phonon scatterings have been applied to reduce the thermal conductivity. Besides, some successful synergistic effects based on band engineerings and phonon scatterings are illustrated as a simultaneous way to optimize both the power factor and thermal conductivity. Summarizing the above three main parts, we point out that the synergistic effects should be effectively exploited, and these may further boost the thermoelectric performance of PbTe alloys and can be extended to other thermoelectric materials.

Keywords: thermoelectric PbTe alloys band engineering phonon scattering synergistic effects

Received: 20 October 2017
Revised: 06 March 2018
Accepted manuscript online:

PACS:	73.50.Lw	(Thermoelectric effects)
	84.60.Rb	(Thermoelectric, electrogasdynamic and other direct energy conversion)

Fund:

Project supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2013CB632506), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51501105, 51672159, and 51611540342), the Young Scholars Program of Shandong University (Grant No. 2015WLJH21), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 2015M580588 and 2016T90631), the Postdoctoral Innovation Foundation of Shandong Province, China (Grant No. 201603027), the Fundamental Research Funds of Shandong University (Grant No. 2015TB019), and the Foundation of the State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science and Technology (Grant No. 201703).

Corresponding Authors: Hongchao Wang, Chunlei Wang
E-mail: wanghc@sdu.edu.cn;wangcl@sdu.edu.cn

Cite this article:

Jinze Zhai(翟近泽), Teng Wang(王腾), Hongchao Wang(王洪超), Wenbin Su(苏文斌), Xue Wang(王雪), Tingting Chen(陈婷婷), Chunlei Wang(王春雷) Strategies for optimizing the thermoelectricity of PbTe alloys 2018 Chin. Phys. B 27 047306

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