Abstract
Half-Heusler (HH) alloys have attracted considerable interest as promising thermoelectric (TE) materials in the temperature range around 700 K and above, which is close to the temperature range of most industrial waste heat sources. The past few years have seen nanostructuing play an important role in significantly enhancing the TE performance of several HH alloys. In this article, we briefly review the recent progress and advances in these HH nanocomposites. We begin by presenting the structure of HH alloys and the different strategies that have been utilized for improving the TE properties of HH alloys. Next, we review the details of HH nanocomposites as obtained by different techniques. Finally, the review closes by highlighting several promising strategies for further research directions in these very promising TE materials.
Highlights
The imperative demand for alternative and sustainable energies and energy conversion technologies to reduce our global reliance on fossil fuels leads to important regimes of research, including that of thermoelectricity
A high efficiency thermoelectric (TE) device consists of legs each made of high dimensionless figure of merit n-type or p-type material
The nanostructuring approach significantly enhances the ZT values of HH nanocomposites by significantly reducing the lattice thermal conductivity [69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78]
Summary
The imperative demand for alternative and sustainable energies and energy conversion technologies to reduce our global reliance on fossil fuels leads to important regimes of research, including that of thermoelectricity. A high efficiency thermoelectric (TE) device consists of legs (pellets) each made of high dimensionless figure of merit n-type or p-type material These n-type or p-type legs are connected electrically in series and thermally in parallel to form a TE module or device. The Seebeck coefficient of HH compounds TiNiSn, ZrNiSn and HfNiSn are in the range of −200 to −400 μV/K (n-type) at room temperature [36,62], which is higher than that of the state-of-the-art Bi2Te3 compounds. For this reason, HH compounds have attracted considerable attention as a promising candidate material for moderate and high temperature TE power generation applications. We finish with a discussion of challenges and promising strategies for further research directions in these materials
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