The study and development of thermoelectric materials, which convert thermal energy to electrical energy in the solid state, has grown immensely in the past decade from a relatively niche field to a broad research area spanning materials science, condensed matter physics, and solid-state chemistry. Despite several advantages of Thermoelectric energy conversion (TEC) over competing energy conversion methods, there are several outstanding materials challenges to develop inexpensive, earth-abundant, and environmentally-friendly thermoelectric materials with high performance metrics such as efficiency and power delivery.

The proposed TEC symposium will highlight the multidisciplinary aspects of the thermoelectric field by focusing on two important and complementary approaches for the development of new thermoelectric materials: (a) experimental studies focused on the discovery, synthesis and understanding of materials with complexity on the atomic and microstructural levels, and (b) development of novel theoretical methods to predict such materials and structures and their implementation. Part (a) will emphasize recent progress experimental studies of materials including but not limited to: (i) novel ternary and quaternary materials from inorganic material classes such as chalcogenides, pnictides, oxides, (ii) alloys including high entropy alloys, and (iii) multiphase and multinary composites with hierarchical microstructures. As realizing high performance thermoelectric materials requires a careful balance between various transport quantities, complexity in compositions could offer a pathway to solving this problem. In part (b), we will encourage submissions that are focused on new approaches to material discovery and modeling, for example, by using new high-throughput strategies and a-priori predictions of electronic and thermal transport properties.

electrical properties energy generation phase transformation simulation thermal conductivity thermoelectric thermoelectricity