Layer-structured thermoelectric materials: fundamentals, strategies and progress

Thermoelectric materials convert between heat and electricity without any emissions or vibrational parts, offering a sustainable solution to overcome the upcoming energy crisis. Compared with conventional bulk thermoelectric materials, layer-structured thermoelectric materials show unique advantage, such as superlow thermal conductivity and high power factor with enhanced thermoelectric performance, which has become a research focus in recent years. This chapter provides an overview on thermoelectric fundamentals and the strategies to enhance the thermoelectric performances. On the basis of fundamental analysis, several key strategies to engineer the thermoelectric parameters have been highlighted. Finally, the research progress of the state-of-art layer-structured thermoelectric materials has been summarized to understand and explain the underpinnings of the innovative breakthroughs in the last decade or so. We believe that recent achievements will augur the possibility for thermoelectric power generation and cooling and discuss several future directions which could lead to new exciting next generation of layerstructured thermoelectrics