Abstract
The study of thermoelectric materials spans condensed matter physics, materials science and engineering, and solid-state chemistry. The diversity of the participants and the inherent complexity of the topic mean that it is difficult, if not impossible, for a researcher to be fluent in all aspects of the field. This review, which grew out of a one-week summer school for graduate students, aims to provide an introduction and practical guidance for selected conceptual, synthetic, and characterization approaches and to craft a common umbrella of language, theory, and experimental practice for those engaged in the field of thermoelectric materials. This review does not attempt to cover all major aspects of thermoelectric materials research or review state-of-the-art thermoelectric materials. Rather, the topics discussed herein reflect the expertise and experience of the authors. We begin by discussing a universal approach to modeling electronic transport using Landauer theory. The core sections of the review are focused on bulk inorganic materials and include a discussion of effective strategies for powder and single crystal synthesis, the use of national synchrotron sources to characterize crystalline materials, error analysis, and modeling of transport data using an effective mass model, and characterization of phonon behavior using inelastic neutron scattering and ultrasonic speed of sound measurements. The final core section discusses the challenges faced when synthesizing carbon-based samples and the measuring or interpretation of their transport properties. We conclude this review with a brief discussion of some of the grand challenges and opportunities that remain to be addressed in the study of thermoelectrics.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 021303 |
Journal | Applied Physics Reviews |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 1 2018 |
Externally published | Yes |
Funding
A.Z. acknowledges funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Award # DMR SSMC-1709158 and the editorial contributions of Mack Marshall and Jason Mueller. J.L.B. and A.J.F. gratefully acknowledge financial support from NREL’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program. The NREL is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308 with Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, the Manager and Operator of the NREL. The U. S. Government retains (and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U. S. Government retains) a non-exclusive, paid up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this work or allow others to do so, for U. S. Government purposes. M.L.C. acknowledges support from DOE BES award #SC0016390. J.W. and K.K. are grateful to current and former Kovnir Group members for the all the syntheses, crystal growth, in-situ studies, and some of the photos used in this review. Kovnir group research in thermoelectrics is supported by the DOE-BES, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, under Award DESC0008931. Beamline 17-BM scientists W. Xu and A. Yakovenko and Advanced Light Source at Argonne National Laboratory are acknowledged for the development and support of the in-situ XRD capabilities. O.D., S.D.K., and G.J.S. acknowledge funding as part of the Solid-State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S3TEC), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), under Award # DE-SC0001299/DE-FG02-09ER46577. E.S.T. and G.J.S. acknowledge support from NSF Award #1729487, and EST acknowledges support from NSF Award # 1334713. T.D.S. acknowledges support from NSF CAREER Award # 1651668.