Chemical modulation and defect engineering in high-performance GeTe-based thermoelectrics
Thermoelectric technology plays an important role in developing sustainable clean energy and reducing carbon emissions, offering new opportunities to alleviate current energy and environmental crises. Nowadays, GeTe has emerged as a highly promising thermoelectric candidate for mid-temperature appli...
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| Published in | Chemical science (Cambridge) Vol. 16; no. 4; pp. 1617 - 1651 |
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| Main Authors | , , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
England
Royal Society of Chemistry
22.01.2025
The Royal Society of Chemistry |
| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Thermoelectric technology plays an important role in developing sustainable clean energy and reducing carbon emissions, offering new opportunities to alleviate current energy and environmental crises. Nowadays, GeTe has emerged as a highly promising thermoelectric candidate for mid-temperature applications, due to its remarkable thermoelectric figure of merit (
ZT
) of 2.7. This review presents a thorough overview of the advancements in GeTe thermoelectric materials, meticulously detailing the crystal structure, chemical bonding characteristics, band structure, and phonon dynamics to elucidate the underlying mechanisms that contribute to their exceptional performance. Moreover, the phase transition in GeTe introduces unique degrees of freedom that enable multiple pathways for property optimization. In terms of electrical properties, noticeable enhancement can be realized through strategies such as band structure modulation, carrier concentration engineering, and vacancy engineering. For phonon transport properties, by incorporating defect structures with varying dimensions and constructing multi-scale hierarchical architectures, phonons can be effectively scattered across different wavelengths. Additionally, we provide a summary of current research on devices and modules of GeTe. This review encapsulates historical progress while projecting future development trends that will facilitate the practical application of GeTe in alignment with environmentally sustainable objectives.
The crystal structure, chemical bonding characteristics, band structure, and phonon dynamics of GeTe are revealed to elucidate the underlying mechanisms that contribute to its exceptional performance. |
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| Bibliography: | Hezhang Li received his PhD degree from Tohoku University, Japan, in 2022 and then worked at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan, as a postdoc researcher from April, 2022 to February 2023. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at Tsinghua University, China. His research focuses on the calculation of electronic structures, crystal structure analysis and the transport properties of Heusler alloys and other thermoelectric materials. Jing-Feng Li is a Changjiang scholar distinguished professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University and also serves as deputy director of Tsinghua University-Toyota research center. He is also a specially appointed guest professor at Tohoku University in Japan. His research interests include thermoelectric materials and devices, lead-free ferro/piezoelectric ceramics, piezoelectric films for MEMS, and dielectric materials for energy storage. He has been elected a foreign fellow of the Engineering Academy of Japan, fellow of The American Ceramic Society, member of IEEE Ferroelectric Standing Committee, and board member of the International Thermoelectric Society. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Materiomics and a Highly Cited Researcher. Yilin Jiang is currently a PhD candidate under the supervision of Prof. Jing-Feng Li at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He received his BE degree in Materials Science and Engineering from the Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2020. His primary research interest is thermoelectric materials. Jincheng Yu received his BE and MD degrees from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Shandong University, China, in 2014 and 2017, respectively. He received his PhD degree from the Department of Materials at The University of Manchester, UK, in 2021. He is currently a Shuimu Tsinghua Scholar at Tsinghua University, China, under the supervision of Prof. Jing-Feng Li. His main research interests focus on thermoelectric materials and devices. Hua-Lu Zhuang is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Tsinghua University, funded by the Shuimu Tsinghua Scholar program, under the supervision of Prof. Jing-Feng Li. He received his bachelor's degree from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (China) in 2017 and obtained his PhD degree from Tsinghua University (China) in 2022. His current research focuses on thermoelectric materials and devices. ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 14 ObjectType-Review-3 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 2041-6520 2041-6539 |
| DOI: | 10.1039/d4sc06615d |