Routes to High-Ranged Thermoelectric Performance

Abstract

Thermoelectric technology has immense potential in enabling energy conversion between heat and electricity, and its conversion efficiency is mainly determined by the wide-temperature thermoelectric performance in a given material. Therefore, it is more meaningful to pursue high ZT values in a wide temperature range (namely high average ZT) rather than the peak ZT value at a temperature point. Herein, taking lead chalcogenides as paradigm, some rational routes to high average ZT value in thermoelectric materials are introduced, such as bandgap tuning and dynamic doping. This perspective will emphasize the importance of dynamically optimizing carrier and phonon transport properties to high-ranged thermoelectric performance, which could judiciously be extended to other thermoelectric systems.