Journal
MATERIALS TODAY
Volume 16, Issue 5, Pages 166-176Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.mattod.2013.05.004
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Center for Revolutionary Materials for Solid State Energy Conversion, an Energy Frontier Research Center
- US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences [DE-SC0001054]
- South University of Science and Technology of China
Ask authors/readers for more resources
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.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available