Recent progress in “phonon-liquid” thermoelectric materials

Thermoelectric technology is a clean energy technique,which has the advances in the direct energy conversion between electricity and heat using Seebeck and Peltier effects in semiconductors.The applications of superionic conductors are usually focusing on battery materials.This paper describes the recent progress by combing the research of superionic and thermoelectric materials.The superionic conductor has two different sublattices,which could provide a unique character to optimize electrical and thermal transports of thermoelectric materials,leading to the effect of cutting phonon transverse waves and thus a series of novel thermoelectric materials within the concept of phonon-liquid.This new concept provides a good guiding principle for the optimization of current thermoelectric materials and discovery of new high performance thermoelectric compounds.