Thermoelectric sulfides with the colusite structure: theory and experiments

We have achieved extraordinary power factors in bulk thermoelectric sulfides with the colusite structure without compromising the low lattice thermal conductivity. Using a synergy between high-throughput calculations and experiments we learned a possible strategy to engineer the electron relaxation time. The protocol is based on the “conductive network paradigm”, it has been applied to a variety of compositions and lead to power factors up to 1.86 mW m^-1 K^-2 at 700K and ZT=0.86 before any optimization procedure.