ABSTRACT
Thermoelectricity offers a reliable, fully solid-state means of cooling and power generation. Currently,
because of a low efficiency of the thermoelectric materials due primarily to their small thermoelectric
figure-of-merit, thermoelectric applications cover only a niche area of technology. Although ingenious
engineering approaches could broaden the scope of applications, the true economic impact of this
technology is conditioned on the availability of more efficient materials that would significantly exceed
the performance of the present-day state-of-the-art thermoelectrics based on Bi
Te
–Sb
Te
alloys,
PbTe, and Si-Ge solid solutions. Over the past 10 years or so, an intensive research effort worldwide
has identified several novel thermoelectrics that, with further development, could bring about the
breakthrough and open up new horizons for a widespread use of thermoelectricity. Among the most
promising novel materials are filled skutterudites. An in-depth account of the physical, chemical, and
materials issues pertaining to skutterudites has been published recently,
and the relevance of
skutterudites to thermoelectricity was pointed out.
