Graded Design of Carrier Concentration in Thermoelectric PbTe System by Heat-treatment

Synthesis and Characterization of Thermoelectric Nanomaterials

“…Though a perfect PGEC material is still very far from realization, a large number of complex materials such as skutterudites [24,25], clathrates [26,27], and other zintl compounds [28] have been investigated as the prospective PGEC materials to obtain ZT values in the range of 1-1.5. Soon after Hicks and Dresselhaus [15] was obtained for p-type PbTe at 773 K. The approach of manipulating density of states via doping PbTe with group III elements like thalium is becoming more popular.…”