Curiosity Rover Powered by Thermoelectrics Lands on Mars

The newest Mars rover from NASA JPL/Caltech uses PbTe-based thermoelectrics for power. News and Video

Eric Toberer wins 2011 ITS Young Investigator Award

Former Posdoc Eric Toberer is now Assistant Professor of Physics at Colorado School of Mines.

Liquid-Like Thermoelectric Materials

Because a liquid does not propagate shear vibrations the thermal conductivity can be less than that of a solid. Using the liquid-like behaviour of superionic conductors and related highly disordered materials extends the phonon-glass electron-crystal concept for the search for new thermoelectrics.

• Press Coverage: R&D Mag - Nanowerk - 中国科学院
• “Liquid-like Copper Ion Thermoelectric Materials” Nature Materials, 11, 422 (2012)
• "Disordered Zinc in Zn4Sb3 with Phonon Glass, Electron Crystal Thermoelectric Properties" Nature Materials, Vol 3, p 458-463 (2004)
• more Cu2Se... , more Zn4Sb3...

Band Structure Engineering of PbTe based alloys for Thermoelectrics

Alloys of PbTe have been used to generate electricity from heat on NASA space missions for 50 years and now are being considered for use on Earth for automotive waste heat recovery. Caltech has recently demonstrated that the zT of PbTe and PbSe alloys can be tuned to be much better than previously thought possible due, in part, to the exceptionally high valley degeneracy.

• Press Coverage: ScienceMag - PhysicsWorld - AmericanScientist - ArsTechnica
• “Weak Electron-Phonon Coupling Contributing to High Thermoelectric Performance in n-Type PbSe” PNAS available online (2012)
• "Convergence of electronic bands for high performance bulk thermoelectrics" Nature 473, 66 (2011)
• "High thermoelectric figure of merit in heavy hole dominated PbTe" Energy and Environmental Science 4, 2085 (2011)
• "Reevaluation of PbTe1-xIx as high performance n-type thermoelectric material" Energy and Environmental Science 4, 2090 (2011)
• "Heavily doped p-type PbSe with high thermoelectric performance: an alternative of PbTe" Advanced Materials 23, 1366 (2011)

Complex Zintl Compounds

The rich solid-state chemistry of Zintl phases enables a directed search and optimization of new complex thermoelectric materials. Several new Zintl Compounds have been found with inherently low thermal conductivity and can be doped to have high zT.

• "Zintl Chemistry for Designing High Efficiency Thermoelectric Materials" Chemistry of Materials, 22 p624 (2010)
• "Ca₃AlSb₃: an inexpensive, non-toxic thermoelectric material for waste heat recovery" Energy and Environmental Science 4, 510 (2011)
• "The Zintl compound Ca₅Al₂Sb₆ for low cost thermoelectric power generation" Advanced Functional Materials 20, 4357 (2010)