ABSTRACT
Certainly, to get efficient TEMs, having high enough Z T values, would significantly increase the economical competitiveness of TE
devices, considerably expanding their range of possible applications.
Consequently, during the past seven decades a broad collection of
different materials has been systematically explored in order to look
for more efficient TEMs. Unfortunately, according to the measured
transport data, an empirical barrier soon appeared in the way to
achieve this goal: the recorded FOM values for all of these materials
were always constrained to take on values below an upper limit
threshold.
