The development and impact of tin selenide on thermoelectrics.

Thermoelectric technology experienced rapid development over the past 20 years, with the most promising applications being in both power generation and active cooling. Among existing thermoelectrics, tin selenide (SnSe) has had particularly rapid development owing to the unexpectedly high thermoelectric efficiency that has been continuously established over the past decade. Several transport mechanisms and strategies used to interpret and improve the thermoelectric performance of SnSe have been important for understanding and developing other material systems with SnSe-like characteristics.

Grid-plainification enables medium-temperature PbSe thermoelectrics to cool better than BiTe.

Thermoelectric cooling technology has important applications for processes such as precise temperature control in intelligent electronics. The bismuth telluride (BiTe)-based coolers currently in use are limited by the scarcity of Te and less-than-ideal cooling capability. We demonstrate how removing lattice vacancies through a grid-design strategy switched PbSe from being useful as a medium-temperature power generator to a thermoelectric cooler.

Lattice plainification advances highly effective SnSe crystalline thermoelectrics.

Thermoelectric technology has been widely used for key areas, including waste-heat recovery and solid-state cooling. We discovered tin selenide (SnSe) crystals with potential power generation and Peltier cooling performance. The extensive off-stoichiometric defects have a larger impact on the transport properties of SnSe, which motivated us to develop a lattice plainification strategy for defects engineering.

High thermoelectric efficiency realized in SnSe crystals via structural modulation.

Crystalline thermoelectrics have been developed to be potential candidates for power generation and electronic cooling, among which SnSe crystals are becoming the most representative. Herein, we realize high-performance SnSe crystals with promising efficiency through a structural modulation strategy. By alloying strontium at Sn sites, we modify the crystal structure and facilitate the multiband synglisis in p-type SnSe, favoring the optimization of interactive parameters μ and m.

Moving fast makes for better cooling.

Optimizing carrier mobility with composition and processing is key for thermoelectric coolers.

Realization of unpinned two-dimensional dirac states in antimony atomic layers.

Two-dimensional (2D) Dirac states with linear dispersion have been observed in graphene and on the surface of topological insulators. 2D Dirac states discovered so far are exclusively pinned at high-symmetry points of the Brillouin zone, for example, surface Dirac states at [Formula: see text] in topological insulators BiSe(Te) and Dirac cones at K and [Formula: see text] points in graphene. The low-energy dispersion of those Dirac states are isotropic due to the constraints of crystal symmetries.

Multiple valence bands convergence and strong phonon scattering lead to high thermoelectric performance in p-type PbSe.

Thermoelectric generators enable the conversion of waste heat to electricity, which is an effective way to alleviate the global energy crisis. However, the inefficiency of thermoelectric materials is the main obstacle for realizing their widespread applications and thus developing materials with high thermoelectric performance is urgent. Here we show that multiple valence bands and strong phonon scattering can be realized simultaneously in p-type PbSe through the incorporation of AgInSe.

High thermoelectric performance realized through manipulating layered phonon-electron decoupling.

Thermoelectric materials allow for direct conversion between heat and electricity, offering the potential for power generation. The average dimensionless figure of merit determines device efficiency. N-type tin selenide crystals exhibit outstanding three-dimensional charge and two-dimensional phonon transport along the out-of-plane direction, contributing to a high maximum figure of merit of ~3.

Power generation and thermoelectric cooling enabled by momentum and energy multiband alignments.

Thermoelectric materials transfer heat and electrical energy, hence they are useful for power generation or cooling applications. Many of these materials have narrow bandgaps, especially for cooling applications. We developed SnSe crystals with a wide bandgap ( ≈ 33 ) with attractive thermoelectric properties through Pb alloying.

Ultrahigh Average Realized in p-Type SnSe Crystalline Thermoelectrics through Producing Extrinsic Vacancies.

Crystalline SnSe has been revealed as an efficient thermoelectric candidate with outstanding performance. Herein, record-high thermoelectric performance is achieved among SnSe crystals via simply introducing a small amount of SnSe as a kind of extrinsic defect dopant. This excellent performance mainly arises from the largely enhanced power factor by increasing the carrier concentration high as 6.

Realizing High Thermoelectric Performance in p-Type SnSe through Crystal Structure Modification.

The simple binary compound SnSe has been reported as a robust thermoelectric material for energy conversion by showing strong anharmonicity and multiple electronic valence bands. Herein, we report a record-high average ZT value of ∼1.6 at 300-793 K with maximum ZT values ranging from 0.

Approaching Topological Insulating States Leads to High Thermoelectric Performance in n-Type PbTe.

Realizing high thermoelectric performance requires high electrical transport properties and low thermal conductivity, which are essentially determined by balancing the interdependent controversy of carrier mobility, effective mass, and lattice thermal conductivity. Here, we observed an electronic band inversion (approaching topological insulating states) in Sn and Se co-alloyed PbTe, resulting in optimizing effective mass and carrier mobility. The Sn alloying in PbTe(Se) can narrow its band gap due to band inversion and induce a sharper conduction band (equals to lower carrier mass), which further facilitates high carrier mobility, ∼251 cm V s in PbSnTeSe at room temperature, thus leading to a high power factor.