ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the method developed from Boltzmann theory, which is based on a semiclassical derivation of the nonequilibrium distribution function and has been shown to accurately predict the semiclassical dynamics of a dilute system of particles close to equilibrium. It explores the parabolic band approximation to explicitly illustrate the band and scattering dependencies of the transport coefficients. The chapter presents the transport coefficients as a function of both the chemical potential and the charge carrier concentration. One viable path to remedy the interdependence of these coefficients is to introduce effects that make it possible to simultaneously improve the coefficients and thus enhance the figure-of-merit further. The chapter describes the preceding knowledge and investigate how this can be partly circumvented and consequently how the figure-of-merit can be improved by means of a concept known as energy filtering. The peaks of the power factor and figure-of-merit are shifted to lower chemical potentials compared to the unfiltered case.
