ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s, a systematic search for advanced thermoelectric (TE) materials resulted in the
“rediscovery” of a family of semiconducting materials with the skutterudite crystal structure
having attractive TE properties. For state-of-the-art TE materials such as PbTe and Bi
Te
alloys, the
number of isostructural compounds as well as the possibilities to optimize their bulk properties for
maximum performance at different temperatures of operation are very limited. This is not the case
for the skutterudite family of materials, where 11 binary compounds and many solid solutions and
related phases are known to exist.
