Recent advances of n-type low-cost PbSe-based thermoelectric materials

Traditional thermoelectric (TE) materials usually contain scarce and expensive chemical elements, weakening the commercial value in clean energy community. With further extension of TE technology, materials containing earth-abundant elements should be developed. Recently, PbSe has attracted much attention because of its low cost and higher operation temperature compared to PbTe. In particular, n-type PbSe surprisingly shows comparable ZT value with n-type PbTe, making it the reasonable alternative. In this review, an overview about the advances of improving TE performance in n-type PbSe is presented. These efforts to optimize TE performance will be divided into two parts: one is to tune the electrical transport property by band engineering and the other is to tune the thermal transport property by manipulating phonon scattering. Finally, the possible direction to optimize TE performance, the problems in real application, and the future perspectives of n-type PbSe are discussed.