New tricks for optimizing thermoelectric materials

This review briefly highlights recent approaches for understanding, optimizing and designing thermoelectric materials. Band convergence has been achieved by chemical modification of lone-pair interactions and crystal symmetry in various materials. The effects of such lone-pairs on the lattice anharmonicity and thermal conductivity are discussed. Lastly, recent findings that demonstrate the influence of defect chemistry on thermoelectric transport are used to suggest new routes to improve the performance of thermoelectric materials.