Fabrication of silicon-germanium thermoelectric materials for terrestrial general purpose applications

Si-Ge thermoelectric materials (TEM) have been used for special purpose applications particularly in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) for a few decades. Despite many of their desirable properties they have not been used as widely for day to day direct energy conversion purposes. Considering the recently developed technologies in materials science and TEM processing, this study investigated the possibility of making and using Si-Ge based TEM for direct heat to electricity power conversion processes in general purpose applications.