An important research goal in the domain of thermoelectric materials is to seek out materials with increasingly larger figures of merit zT. Perhaps as important, in applications involving the recovery of waste heat, is to ensure that useful thermoelectric materials are also sufficiently inexpensive, (ie. comprised of earth-abundant elements) and easily processed that their use can be widespread.In the firts part of this talk, I will describe the half-Heusler system TiNiSn, incluiding its processing using microwave and inductive levitation methods, and how a second TiNi2Sn full Heusler phase allows thermal transport to be impeded, and also slightly increases the power factor, to achieve an improved zT. Density functional calculations of energy-level offsets between the two phases provide insights into whether there is any sort of doping by the metal to the semiconductor. Percolative effects are also important.In the second part of the talk, I will focus on the search for oxide thermoelectrics based on 'mining' the thermoelectrics literature to seek out key characteristics that would allow the parameter space of materials to be explored. In this regard, I will also discuss measures of resource scarcity.

Approaches to robust and inexpensive thermoelectric materials: Spontaneous phase separation and data mining

245th National Meeting (2013)

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