ICT2014 Abstracts

Recent developments and current research in high performance bulk thermoelectric materials, comprising nanostructuring, mesostructuring, band alignment, band engineering will be presented. These are synergistic key strategies for boosting the thermoelectric performance. To date, the dramatic enhancements in figure of merit achieved in bulk thermoelectric materials come either from the reduction in lattice thermal conductivity or improvement in power factors, or both. We will review the relationships between very large reduction of lattice thermal conductivity with all-scale hierarchical architecturing, large enhanced Seebeck coefficients with intra-matrix electronic structure engineering and control of the carrier mobility with matrix/inclusion band alignment. These enhance power factor and reduce lattice thermal conductivity. The new concept of hierarchical compositionally-alloyed nanostructures to achieve these effects is presented. The talk will give particular emphasis on the systems PbTe, PbSe and PbS in which spectacular advances have been demonstrated. A discussion of future possible strategies is aimed at enhancing the thermoelectric figure of merit of these materials. (supported in part by the Center: Revolutionary Materials for Solid State Energy Conversion, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, and Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0001054)