Concise overview of methods to enhance the thermoelectric efficiency of SnTe

TL;DR

This paper reviews methods to improve SnTe thermoelectric materials by increasing power factor and reducing thermal conductivity, focusing on synthesis, band structure engineering, and nanostructuring techniques.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of techniques to enhance SnTe's thermoelectric efficiency, including synthesis, band engineering, and nanostructuring approaches.

Findings

Nanostructuring reduces thermal conductivity effectively.

Band structure engineering enhances the power factor.

Various synthesis methods enable optimization of SnTe materials.

Abstract

SnTe is a potential thermoelectric material in the mid temperature range. Detailed techniques to enhance the figure of merit by increasing the Power Factor, and reducing thermal conductivity, of SnTe-based TE materials are discussed. The key factors governing the figure of merit of a thermoelectric material are discussed to facilitate the optimization of the efficiency. Various techniques to synthesis bulk and nanostructured SnTe are presented. Efforts are made to reveal the optimization techniques for figure of merit of SnTe based materials through band structure engineering and reduction in thermal conductivity. Nano-structuring is one of the important approaches to decouple the interrelated material properties and reduce thermal conductivity. Band structure engineering is employed to enhance the Power Factor.