The development of new thermoelectric materials with good performance and low cost is necessary to make this technology more accessible and thus achieve a significant environmental impact. The work presented in this thesis deals with the synthesis and the structural and physicochemical characterisation of inexpensive oxides, oxysulfides and sulfides compounds in order to study their thermoelectric properties.The first study investigates the influence of low indium contents on the structure and properties of zinc oxide. The characterization of the samples by transmission electron microscopy shows that the solubility of indium in ZnO is less than 0.5 at%. The bidimensional defects formed from low concentrations of indium greatly reduce the el...