The silicides have obvious attractive characteristics that make them promising materials as thermoelectric energy converters. The constituting elements are abundant and have low price, many of compounds have good high temperature stability. Therefore, considerable efforts have been made, especially in the past 10 years, in order to develop efficient silicide-based thermoelectric materials. These efforts have culminated in creation of Mg2(Si-Sn) n-type thermoelectric alloys with proven maximum thermoelectric figure of merit ZT of 1.3. This success is based on combination of two approaches to maximize the thermoelectric performance: the band structure engineering and the alloying. In this chapter, we review data on crystal and electronic structure as well as on the thermoelectric properties of Mg2X compounds and their solid solutions.
Part of the book: Thermoelectrics for Power Generation
The principles and methods of thermopower and electrical conductivity measurements at high temperatures (100–1000 K) are reviewed. These two properties define the so-called power factor of thermoelectric materials. Moreover, in combination with thermal conductivity, they determine efficiency of thermoelectric conversion. In spite of the principal simplicity of measurement methods of these properties, their practical realization is rather complicated, especially at high temperatures. This leads to large uncertainties in determination of the properties, complicates comparison of the results, obtained by different groups, and hinders realistic estimate of potential thermoelectric efficiency of new materials. The lack of commonly accepted reference material for thermopower measurements exaggerates the problem. Therefore, it is very important to have a clear understanding of capabilities and limitations of the measuring methods and set-ups. The chapter deals with definitions of thermoelectric parameters and principles of their experimental determination. Metrological characteristics of state-of-the-art experimental set-ups for high temperature measurements are analyzed.
Part of the book: Thermoelectrics for Power Generation