Thermoelectrocatalysis: an emerging strategy for converting waste heat into chemical energy

Waste heat emissions are universally present in the environment and industrial production. Innovations aimed at efficiently utilizing low-grade thermal energy have long been desired. Among these, thermoelectric materials can directly convert heat into electricity based on the Seebeck effect. The overall performance of a thermoelectric material is assessed through a dimensionless figure of merit, ZT, represented as ZT = S2⋅σ/κ, where S is the Seebeck coefficient, σ is the electrical conductivity and κ is the thermal conductivity. In the pursuit of high conversion efficiency, recent years have witnessed the emergence of many promising thermoelectric materials with notable ZT values (>2).