Recent Advances in Nanostructured Thermoelectric Half-Heusler Compounds

Wenjie Xie; Anke Weidenkaff; Xinfeng Tang; Qingjie Zhang; Joseph Poon; Terry M Tritt

doi:10.3390/nano2040379

Recent Advances in Nanostructured Thermoelectric Half-Heusler Compounds

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2012 Nov 14;2(4):379-412. doi: 10.3390/nano2040379.

Authors

Wenjie Xie¹, Anke Weidenkaff², Xinfeng Tang³, Qingjie Zhang⁴, Joseph Poon⁵, Terry M Tritt⁶

Affiliations

¹ Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Solid State Chemistry and Catalysis, CH-8600 Dubendorf, Switzerland. wenjie.xie@empa.ch.
² Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Solid State Chemistry and Catalysis, CH-8600 Dubendorf, Switzerland. anke.weidenkaff@empa.ch.
³ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China. tangxf@whut.edu.cn.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, China. zhangqj@whut.edu.cn.
⁵ Department of Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4714, USA. sjp9x@virginia.edu.
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-0978, USA. ttritt@clemson.edu.

Abstract

Half-Heusler (HH) alloys have attracted considerable interest as promising thermoelectric (TE) materials in the temperature range around 700 K and above, which is close to the temperature range of most industrial waste heat sources. The past few years have seen nanostructuing play an important role in significantly enhancing the TE performance of several HH alloys. In this article, we briefly review the recent progress and advances in these HH nanocomposites. We begin by presenting the structure of HH alloys and the different strategies that have been utilized for improving the TE properties of HH alloys. Next, we review the details of HH nanocomposites as obtained by different techniques. Finally, the review closes by highlighting several promising strategies for further research directions in these very promising TE materials.

Keywords: half-Heusler; nanocomposite; thermoelectric.

Publication types

Review