Abstract
Thermoelectric materials have attracted much attention due to their applications in waste-heat recovery, power generation, and solid state cooling. In comparison with thermoelectric alloys, oxide semiconductors, which are thermally and chemically stable in air at high temperature, are regarded as the candidates for high-temperature thermoelectric applications. However, their figure-of-merit ZT value has remained low, around 0.1–0.4 for more than 20 years. The poor performance in oxides is ascribed to the low electrical conductivity and high thermal conductivity. Since the electrical transport properties in these thermoelectric oxides are strongly correlated, it is difficult to improve both the thermoelectric power and electrical conductivity simultaneously by conventional methods. This review summarizes recent progresses on high-performance oxide-based thermoelectric bulk-materials including n-type ZnO, SrTiO3, and In2O3, and p-type Ca3Co4O9, BiCuSeO, and NiO, enhanced by heavy-element doping, band engineering and nanostructuring.
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Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the Ministry of Science & Technology of China through a 973-Project, under Grant No. 2013CB632506, NSF of China under Grant No. 51025205 and 11234012, and Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education, under Grant No. 20120002110006.
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Ren, G., Lan, J., Zeng, C. et al. High Performance Oxides-Based Thermoelectric Materials. JOM 67, 211–221 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-014-1218-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-014-1218-2