Force multipliers for the discovery of advanced thermoelectric materials

This talk will focus on the development of advanced thermoelectric materials within the Materials Genome Initiative paradigm and the prospects for widespread thermal-to-electric power conversion. These thermoelectric material discovery efforts are driven by a close coupling of theory, computation, and experimental validation. The implementation of a high through-put search of known and hypothetical compounds for thermoelectric performance (NSF-DMREF) has led to the identification of new classes of thermoelectric materials. Further material development involves demonstrating materials with exceptionally strong phonon-point defect scattering cross-sections and strong lattice anharmonicity. Complementary studies (NSF-CAREER) focus on electronic structure selection for low Lorenz numberand tunable charge carrier scattering. These high throughput computational searches find synergy with combinatorial synthesis methods and automated measurements of sample transport properties. Together, these efforts serve as force multipliers for discovering the next generation of thermoelectric materials.