Alternative strategies for thermoelectric materials development

Abstract

The presently used thermoelectric materials, as Bi2Te 3-Sb2Te3,PbTe and Si1-xGe x,were developed up to the early 1960s. However, they only show a maximum ZT∼1, which leads to device efficiencies that are not big enough to compete, for instance, with the traditional cooling compression systems. The development of the Phonon Glass and Electron Crystal (PGEC) concept, in the middle 1990s, led to the discovery of a large number of new and improved thermoelectric materials. Several strategies were used during these years for this research. In this contribution a review on the different approaches for thermoelectric materials identification and development is made. A special focus will be the recent strategies used in our institutes to identify new thermoelectric materials. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.