Recent developments in thermoelectric Heusler alloys

摘要

Semiconducting Heusler alloys have been sintered for the first time in 1970 but the first studies of electronic band structure and transport properties were performed 20 years later. Until now the most intensively studied semiconducting Heusler alloys are n-type MNiSn-based compound (M = Ti, Zr, Hf) with structure (so-called half Heusler alloys) which have been considered as perspective thermoelectric materials for applications at temperatures T≥ 700 K， thanks to a large thermoelectric figure of merit ZT≥1.