Abstract
Silicides as thermoelectrics were proposed a long time ago by E.N. Nikitin in a paper published in 1958 [5]. Since this period and due to the large use of bismuth telluride alloys, the researches were slowly growing up to 2000 years. In this last period, the scientific community has shared the societal problems concerning energy saving and environmental problems concerning the harmfulness and material recycling. Then a wide panel of materials were explored in order to replace tellurides and selenides. The main characteristics of these materials are due to two things: a high density of states (d ~ 1021 cm−3) and a low carrier mobilities (μ ~ 10 cm2 V−1 s−1). In order to enhance the thermoelectric properties, it is necessary to study the decrease of the density of states and to obtain higher mobilities. It can be obtained by working on the chemical compositions and on the micro(nano)-structuration on the samples. Nevertheless, thermoelectric silicides possess high melting point and different types of conduction, and due to their heat of formation (∆fH), they show a good thermal stability and a maximum thermoelectric figure of merit (ZTmax) [6]. Moreover, and according to the A.F. Ioffé theory [4], most of the materials are narrow bandgap semiconductors; the energy gap (Eg) presents suitable values for thermoelectric applications.
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Tedenac, JC. (2017). Review of Materials. In: Multicomponent Silicides for Thermoelectric Materials. SpringerBriefs in Materials. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58268-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58268-9_3
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