Abstract
PbTe is a typical intermediate-temperature thermoelectric material, which has undergone extensive developments and achieved excellent high thermoelectric performance. In this perspective we summarized several strategies that were successfully applied in PbTe-based thermoelectric materials through manipulating charge and phonon transports, such as optimizing carrier density to tune Fermi level, tailoring band structure to enhance effective mass, and designing all-scale hierarchical architectures to suppress phonon propagation. Meanwhile, due to the different features of conduction and valence bands, we separately introduced the approaches to enhance performance of p-type and n-type PbTe. In p-type PbTe, the strategies of band convergence, band alignment and density of state (DOS) distortion are more effective to achieve high electrical transport properties. By contrast, flattening conduction bands and introducing deep impurity level are more suitable for n-type PbTe. Lastly, several potential strategies were proposed to further improve the thermoelectric performance of PbTe-based materials, which might be extended to other thermoelectric systems.
Highlights
REVIEW ARTICLE OPENPbTe is a typical intermediate-temperature thermoelectric material, which has undergone extensive developments and achieved excellent high thermoelectric performance
With more than 60% of input energy being lost, most of which as waste heat, there is a compelling need for high performance thermoelectric materials that can directly and reversibly convert heat to electric energy
PbTe is a typical intermediate-temperature thermoelectric material, which has undergone extensive developments and achieved excellent high thermoelectric performance. In this perspective we summarized several strategies that were successfully applied in PbTe-based thermoelectric materials through manipulating charge and phonon transports, such as optimizing carrier density to tune Fermi level, tailoring band structure to enhance effective mass, and designing all-scale hierarchical architectures to suppress phonon propagation
Summary
PbTe is a typical intermediate-temperature thermoelectric material, which has undergone extensive developments and achieved excellent high thermoelectric performance. In this perspective we summarized several strategies that were successfully applied in PbTe-based thermoelectric materials through manipulating charge and phonon transports, such as optimizing carrier density to tune Fermi level, tailoring band structure to enhance effective mass, and designing all-scale hierarchical architectures to suppress phonon propagation. Due to the different features of conduction and valence bands, we separately introduced the approaches to enhance performance of p-type and n-type PbTe. In p-type PbTe, the strategies of band convergence, band alignment and density of state (DOS) distortion are more effective to achieve high electrical transport properties. Several potential strategies were proposed to further improve the thermoelectric performance of PbTe-based materials, which might be extended to other thermoelectric systems
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
