Recent advances on thermoelectric materials

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent progress in thermoelectric materials, focusing on innovative approaches like phonon disorder, nanostructuring, and strongly correlated systems to enhance energy conversion efficiency.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of novel strategies and materials that have been recently developed to improve thermoelectric performance.

Findings

Phonon disorder in phonon-glass electron-crystals enhances thermoelectric efficiency.

Nanostructuring reduces thermal conductivity and improves energy conversion.

Strongly correlated systems exhibit charge-spin-orbital degeneracy beneficial for thermoelectrics.

Abstract

By converting waste heat into electricity through the thermoelectric power of solids without producing greenhouse gas emissions, thermoelectric generators could be an important part of the solution to today's energy challenge. There has been a resurgence in the search for new materials for advanced thermoelectric energy conversion applications. In this paper, we will review recent efforts on improving thermoelectric efficiency. Particularly, several novel proof-of-principle approaches such as phonon disorder in phonon-glasselectron crystals, low dimensionality in nanostructured materials and charge-spin-orbital degeneracy in strongly correlated systems on thermoelectric performance will be discussed.