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Advances in thermoelectrics: From single phases to hierarchical nanostructures and back

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Abstract

With more than two-thirds of utilized energy being lost as waste heat, there is compelling motivation for high-performance thermoelectric materials that can directly convert heat to electrical energy. However, over the decades, practical realization of thermoelectric materials has been limited by the hitherto low figure of merit, ZT, which governs the Carnot efficiency. This article describes our long-standing efforts to advance ZT to record levels starting from exploratory synthesis and evolving into the nanostructuring and panoscopic paradigm, which has helped to usher in a new era of investigation for thermoelectrics. The term panoscopic is meant as an attempt to integrate all length scales and multiple physical concepts into a single material. As in any other energy-conversion technology involving materials, thermoelectrics research is a challenging exercise in taming “contra-indicated” properties. Critical properties such as high electrical conductivity, thermoelectric power, low thermal conductivity, and mechanical strength do not tend to favor coexistence in a single material. How these can be achieved in certain systems leading to record values of ZT is also described. Endotaxial nanostructures and mesoscale engineering in thermoelectrics enable effective phonon scattering with negligible electron scattering. By combining all relevant length scales hierarchically, we can achieve large enhancements in thermoelectric performance. The field, however, continues to produce surprises.

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Acknowledgment

M.K. thanks the US Department of Energy (DOE), Basic Energy Sciences, through the EFRC Program for the last five years. Before that, he obtained funding from the Office of Naval Research. The EFRC was particularly important because it enabled a number of researchers to collaborate on many of the important problems in thermoelectrics. He also thanks his collaborators at Northwestern University, Vinayak Dravid, Chris Wolverton, and David Seidman; Tim Hogan, Bhanu Mahanti, and Eldon Case at Michigan State University; Ctirad Uher at the University of Michigan; Jos Heremans at Ohio State University; and Yaniv Gelbstein at Ben Gurion University in Israel. He would like to acknowledge recent postdoctoral fellows Lidong Zhao, Kanishka Biswas, John Androulakis, Jiaqing He, and Gangjian Tan and graduate students Rachel Korkosz, Steven Girard, Yeseul Lee, and Thomas Chasapis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northwestern University, USA

    Mercouri G. Kanatzidis

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  1. Mercouri G. Kanatzidis
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Correspondence to Mercouri G. Kanatzidis.

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The following article is based on the MRS Medal presentation given by Mercouri G. Kanatzidis at the 2014 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting in Boston. Kanatzidis was recognized “For the discovery and development of nanostructured thermoelectric materials.”

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Kanatzidis, M.G. Advances in thermoelectrics: From single phases to hierarchical nanostructures and back. MRS Bulletin 40, 687–694 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2015.173

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