Type-I clathrate compounds have attracted a great deal of interest in connection with the search for efficient thermoelectric materials. These compounds constitute networked cages consisting of nano-scale tetrakaidecahedrons (14 hedrons) and dodecahedrons (12 hedrons), in which the group 1 or 2 elements in the periodic table are encaged as the so-called "rattling" guest atom. It is remarkable that, though these compounds have crystalline cubic-structure, they exhibit glasslike phonon thermal conductivity over the whole temperature range depending on the states of rattling guest atoms in the tetrakaidecahedron. In addition, these compounds show unusual glass-like specific heats and THz-frequency phonon dynamics, providing a remarkable broad peak almost identical to those observed in topologically disordered amorphous materials or structural glasses, the so-called Boson peak. An efficient thermoelectric effect is realized in compounds showing these glass-like characteristics. This decade, a number of experimental works dealing with type-I clathrate compounds have been published. These are diffraction experiments, thermal and spectroscopic experiments in addition to those based on heat and electronic transport. These form the raw materials for this article based on advances this decade. The subject of this article involves interesting phenomena from the viewpoint of not only physics but also from the view point of the practical problem of elaborating efficient thermoelectric materials. This review presents a survey of a wide range of experimental investigations of type-I clathrate compounds, together with a review of theoretical interpretations of the peculiar thermal and dynamic properties observed in these materials.

We investigate Dirac fermions in the antiferromagnetic metallic state of iron-based superconductors. Deriving an effective Hamiltonian for Dirac fermions, we reveal that there exist two Dirac cones carrying the same chirality, contrary to graphene, compensated by a Fermi surface with a quadratic energy dispersion as a consequence of a nontrivial topological property inherent in the band structure. We also find that the presence of the Dirac fermions gives the difference of sign-change temperatures between the Hall coefficient and the thermopower. This is consistent with available experimental data.

We examine the spin and charge excitations in antiferromagnetic iron pnictides by mean-field calculations with a random phase approximation in a five-band itinerant model. The calculated excitation spectra reproduce well spin-wave dispersions observed in inelastic neutron scattering, with a realistic magnetic moment for CaFe2As2. A particle-hole gap is found to be crucial to obtain consistent results; we predict the spin wave in LaFeAsO disappears at a lower energy than in CaFe2As2. We analyze that the charge dynamics to make predictions for resonant inelastic x-ray scattering spectra.

We examine electronic states of antiferromagnetic phase in iron pnictides by mean-field calculations of the optical conductivity. We find that a five-band model exhibiting a small magnetic moment, inconsistent with the first-principles calculations, reproduces well the excitation spectra characterized by a multipeak structure emerging below the Néel temperature at low energy, together with an almost temperature-independent structure at high energy. Investigating the interlayer magnetoresistance for this model, we also predict its characteristic field dependence reflecting the Fermi surface.

Phonon anomalies observed in various high T(c) cuprates by neutron experiments are analyzed theoretically in terms of the stripe concept. The phonon self-energy correction is evaluated by taking into account the charge collective modes of stripes, giving rise to dispersion gap, or kink and shadow phonon modes at twice the wave number of spin stripe. These features coincide precisely with observations. The gapped branches of the phonon are found to be in-phase and out-of-phase oscillations relative to the charge collective mode.