Recent Advances in 2D Thermoelectric Materials

The waste heat generated by car engines, power plants, home furnaces and other fossil fuel-burning machinery play an adverse role in the climate. Development of efficient, light-weight, cost-effective, and environmentally-benign thermoelectric materials can help in converting wasted heat into useable energy, thus helping the environment. In this brief review we discuss theoretical methods that can complement experimental search for efficient thermoelectric materials. Using Boltzmann transport theory with a constant relaxation time approximation and non-equilibrium Green's function approach we study thermoelectric parameters by focusing on two dimensional materials ranging from graphene and graphdiyne to phosphorene, transition metal dichalogenides and metal carbides. In some circumstances, the reduced dimension is found to increase the Seebeck coefficient and decrease the thermal conductivity, necessary for improving thermoelectric conversion performance. We also suggest some future studies in this topic.National Natural Science Foundation of China [NSFC-11274023, 21573008]; National Grand Fundamental Research 973 Program of China [2012CB921404]; U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering [DE-FG02-96ER45579, DE-FG02-11ER46827]CPCI-S(ISTP)1017