The results of the study of thermoelectric properties and the defective subsystem of lead telluride doped by antimony PbTe:Sb (8%), promising material for the creation of heat energy converters on their basis. The regularities in the behavior of the properties investigated, which are due to the biphasicity of the material and the significant influence of the technological factors of obtaining samples on their defective subsystem, are established. The modeling of the defect subsystem of PbTe:Sb crystals was carried out taking into account thepresence of additional phase inclusions and it was found that dominant point defects are internode atoms of antimony.

There are presents X-ray results and measurements of thermoelectric parameters (thermoelectric electromotive force α, specific electrical conductivity σ, and coefficient of thermal conductivity k) for materials on the base of PbTe-SnTe system. The dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit ZT ≈ 0,3 received for thermoelectric samples p-Pb0.4Sn0.6Te obtained by cold pressing method in complex with annealing.

The results of the thermoelectric properties study obtained by pressing the materials powder on the basis of two types of lead telluride are shown: mechanical mixtures of basic microdisperse PbTe and nanodispersed additives ZnO or TiO2; alloyed by antimony lead telluride and alloyed by silver lead-tin telluride in amount that exceeds the limit of impurity solubility, in order to provide additional phases. It has been established that the system heterophasicity, especially of the second type, provides the materials obtaining with low value of the thermal conductivity coefficient, which allows receiving effective thermoelectric materials with the thermoelectric figure of merit coefficient  1.0.

The results of study of thermoelectric properties of lead telluride obtained by method of powder pressing arepresented. A modified electrical model for interpreting the empirical dependences σ (T) is proposed, according towhich the compressed sample is represented by a system of crystallites with intergranular boundaries whoseproperties differ along and across the compression axis.

The review of works devoted to the study of thermoelectric, thermodynamic and mechanical properties of highly efficient thermoelectric materials in the system Ag-Pb (Sn) -Sb-Te. It is shown that based on them can be obtained as n-, and district branches of thermoelectric converters with parameter dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit ZT ≈ 1.5 - 2.0.