| About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2021 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Alloys and Compounds for Thermoelectric and Solar Cell Applications IX
|
| Presentation Title |
The “Grand Challenge” of Thermoelectric Materials |
| Author(s) |
David Parker |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
David Parker |
| Abstract Scope |
Despite intensive research, it remains difficult for thermoelectric technology to attain its substantial technological promise.. One main reason is the difficulty of finding sufficiently high performance, based on the “figure-of-merit” ZT. Large ZT requires high electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient S and low lattice thermal conductivity. It is easy to meet these requirements separately – there are numerous materials with thermal conductivity as low as 0.4 W/m-K (five times as low as Bii2Te3), and several materials with substantial power factors of a few to several mW/m-K2. It is finding the simultaneous combination of these properties that is a materials science “grand challenge”. I will discuss three relevant scientific questions:
- Does strong anharmonicity necessarily lead to low carrier mobility?
- Can electrical conductivity masses and density-of-states masses be decoupled?
- Can one use inverse design techniques to design a material with extreme band edge degeneracy? |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Computational Materials Science & Engineering, Modeling and Simulation, Sustainability |