ABSTRACT
In this chapter, a new strategy to develop a thermoelectric material is proposed on the basis of the fact that the unusual behaviors of thermoelectric properties can be quantitatively accounted for by using the information about the fine electronic structure near the chemical potential and the phonon dispersions. Thermoelectric materials have attracted considerable interest because the waste heat emitted from a variety of heat sources, such as industries, homes, automobiles, and so on, is effectively recovered as useful electricity by the use of the thermoelectric generator in which thermoelectric materials are used as one of the main components. The electron transport properties in solids are usually calculated in the context of linear response theory, regardless of the quantum state of the system: metal, semiconductor, band insulator, or the localized insulator. If the semiclassical Bloch–Boltzmann theory is employed, the spectral conductivity becomes a function of electronic density of states, group velocity, and relaxation time.
