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Published April 2021 | public
Journal Article

Fracture toughness of thermoelectric materials

Abstract

The engineering applications of thermoelectric (TE) devices require TE materials possessing high TE performance and robust mechanical properties. Research on thermal and electrical transport properties of TE materials has made significant progress during the last two decades, developing TE materials on the threshold of commercial applications. However, research on mechanical strength and toughness has lagged behind, restricting application of TE materials. Mechanical failure in these materials involves multi-scale processes spanning from atomistic scale to macro scale. We have proposed an integral stress-displacement method to estimate fracture toughness from intrinsic mechanical behavior. In this review, we summarize our recent progress on fracture toughness of TE materials. This is in three parts: (1) Predicting fracture toughness of TE materials from intrinsic mechanical behavior; (2) Intrinsic mechanical behavior and underlying failure mechanism of TE materials; and (3) Nanotwin and nanocomposite strategies for enhancing the mechanical strength and fracture toughness of TE materials. These findings provide essential comprehensive understanding of fracture behavior from micro to the macro scale, laying the foundation for developing reliable TE devices for engineering applications.

Additional Information

© 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V. Received 28 December 2020, Revised 14 February 2021, Accepted 16 February 2021, Available online 26 February 2021. This work is partially supported by the NSFC (Nos. 52022074, 51772231, 51972253), the Hubei Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (2020CFB202), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (WUT: 2020IB001, 2020IB013, 2020III031). S.M. is thankful for the support by Act 211 Government of the Russian Federation, under No. 02.A03.21.0011 and by the Supercomputer Simulation Laboratory of South Ural State University. U.A. gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) with grant number 118M371. W.A.G thanks NSF (CBET-2005250) for support. The authors report no declarations of interest.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023