In recent years, novel families of materials have been discovered and significant improvements in classical thermoelectric materials have been made. Thermoelectric generators are now being used to harvest industrial heat waste and convert it into electricity. This is being utilized in communal incinerators, large smelters, and cement plants. Leading car and truck companies are developing thermoelectric power generators to collect heat from the exhaust systems of gasoline and diesel engines. Additionally, thermoelectric coolers are being used in a variety of picnic boxes, vessels used to transport transplant organs, and in air-conditioned seats of mid-size cars. Consisting of twenty-one chapters written by top researchers in the field, this book explores the major advancements being made in the material aspects of thermoelectricity and provides a critical assessment in regards to the broadening of application opportunities for thermoelectric energy conversion.
Preface
Editor
Contributors
1. Discovery and Design of New Thermoelectric Materials
Eric S. Toberer, Prashun Gorai, and Vladan Stevanović
2. Tetradymites: Bi2Te3-Related Materials
Joseph P. Heremans and Bartlomiej Wiendlocha
3. Growth and Transport Properties of Tetradymite Thin Films
Hang Chi, Wei Liu, and Ctirad Uher
4. All-Scale Hierarchical PbTe: From Nanostructuring to a Panoscopic Material
Gangjian Tan and Mercouri G. Kanatzidis
5. Thermoelectric Properties of Magnesium Silicide–Based Solid Solutions and Higher Manganese Silicides
Johannes de Boor, Titas Dasgupta, and Eckhard Müller
6. Clathrate-Based Thermoelectrics
Toshiro Takabatake and Koichiro Suekuni
7. Advances in Nanostructured Half-Heusler Alloys for Thermoelectric Applications
Pierre F.P. Poudeu, Ruiming Lu, Yuanfeng Liu, Pranati Sahoo, and Alexander Page
8. Thermoelectric Properties of Cu2−δX (X = S, Se, and Te)
Pengfei Qiu, Xun Shi, and Lidong Chen
9. BiCuSeO: A Promising Thermoelectric Material
Li-Dong Zhao and Jing-Feng Li
10. Phase Diagram Study in n-CoSb3 Skutterudites
Yinglu Tang, Chris Wolverton, and G. Jeffrey Snyder
11. Chain-Forming A3MPn3 and A5M2Pn6 Zintl Phases
Alex Zevalkink, Umut Aydemir, and G. Jeffrey Snyder
12. Thallium-Based Chalcogenides as Thermoelectrics
Quansheng Guo, Abdeljalil Assoud, and Holger Kleinke
13. Higher Manganese Silicides
Yuzuru Miyazaki
14. Boron-Based Materials
Takao Mori
15. Complex Chalcogenides: Pseudo-Hollandites, Structures and Properties
Franck Gascoin
16. Tetrahedrites: Earth-Abundant Thermoelectric Materials with Intrinsically Low Thermal Conductivity
Xu Lu and Donald T. Morelli
17. Organic Thermoelectric Materials
Gun-Ho Kim and Kevin P. Pipe
18. Inorganic/Organic Hybrid Superlattice Materials
Kunihito Koumoto, Ruoming Tian, Ronggui Yang, and Chunlei Wan
19. Recent Progress in Skutterudites
G. Jeffrey Snyder, Yinglu Tang, Caitlin M. Crawford, and Eric S. Toberer
20. SHS-Processed Thermoelectric Materials
Xinfeng Tang, Xianli Su, Qingjie Zhang, and Ctirad Uher
21. Prospective Thermoelectrics among Topological Insulators
Jihui Yang
Index
Biography
Ctirad Uher is the C. Wilbur Peters Collegiate Professor in the Physics Department of the University of Michigan, where his research focuses on the field of condensed matter physics, including thermoelectric materials, superconductors, and diluted magnetic semiconductors. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of New South Wales. Uher was Associate Dean for two years at Michigan before serving as Chair of the Physics Department from 1994-2004, expanding the Department enormously during that time. Uher is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was chosen in 2008 for the American Physical Society's Outstanding Referees Program for excellence in peer review. He holds an honorary degree from the University of Pardubice in the Czech Republic.
