It is a high-entropy ‘Zintl’ alloy of the form YbxCa1-xMgyZn2-ySb2, for which the team devised a way to calculate the exact proportions by aiming for band convergence.
“It is normally difficult to get high performance from thermoelectric materials because not all of the electronic bands in a material contribute,” said director of the university’s superconductivity center Zhifeng Ren. “It’s even more difficult to make a complex material where all of the bands work at the same time in order to get the best performance.”
He likens band conversion to many people lifting an object – if they are a similar height, the load is carried more evenly, said Ren.
