ABSTRACT
For the past 60 years, massive investigations have been carried out regarding electrical, optical, and thermal properties of Mg 2 BIV compounds. In the recent decades, more attention has been paid to the Mg2 Si 1-x Snx solid solutions as potential TE materials, because of their high TE performance and environmentally friendly feature with cheap, abundant, and nontoxic constituent elements. The family of Mg 2 BIV compounds, including their alloys, crystallize in the antifluorite structure with BIV in face-centered cubic positions and Mg in tetrahedral sites. In order to improve the TE performance of Mg 2 BIV compounds and their solid solutions, more requirements arise toward the synthesis process, e.g., good homogeneity, precisely controlled stoichiometry, reproducibility, and scale-up ability. In recent years, several different synthesis methods combined with various compaction techniques have been used to fabricate high-quality Mg 2 BIV based samples.
