A comprehensive recent review and practical insights on the usage of advanced materials and enhancement strategies in thermoelectric applications

• Advanced materials and composites for thermoelectric applications. • Recent comprehensive review, critical analysis and potential recommendations. • Properties, optimization techniques, challenges, and potential applications are analyzed. • Comparison of performance of recent thermoelectric materials vs traditional materials. • Potential applications of recent thermoelectric materials in waste heat recovery. Electricity is a critical component of many everyday activities, demanding continuing research to create new or improved techniques for generating electrical power. Thermoelectric generators (TEGs), which work basically on the Seebeck effect can successfully transform input heat from numerous applications into valuable electrical energy, as well as power electronic devices and sensors on their own. However, obstacles include increasing the temperature difference and creating novel materials to improve electrical output and efficiency. Accordingly, this paper discusses these problems by providing a thorough examination of available strategies to enhance the thermoelectric performance. In this study, a variety of materials is presented, starting by the standard used conventional organic and inorganic thermoelectric (TE) materials. Organic materials, such as polyaniline and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT) composites, acquired ZT values ranging from 0.5 to 1.0, demonstrating their promise for versatile and low-cost applications. At extreme temperatures (∼500 K), inorganic materials such as bismuth telluride (Bi 2 Te 3 ) and lead telluride (PbTe) achieved ZT values around 2.0, indicating great efficiency in power production. Bi 2 Te 3 /PEDOT, a hybrid material with organic and inorganic components, demonstrated improved performance with ZT values of 1.5-2.0 due to the synergistic effects of its constituents. Novel composite materials, such as Bi 2 Te 3 -carbon nanotube (CNT) composites and using graphene, developed to optimize thermal and electrical characteristics, enhanced device performance by up to 25% over standard materials, with ZT values ranging from 1.8 to 2.2. In addition, in the present study the new recent materials after applying enhancement methods will be presented. These new materials are developed by different methods and synthesis such as doping, superlattice and heterostructure materials and other methods will be discussed. The main findings indicate that the strategic use of these advanced materials may significantly increase the efficiency and output power of TEG devices, making them more practical for a wide variety of applications. As an examples, 2.8 for (GeTe) 0.95 (Sb 2 Te 3 ) 0.05 alloy, 2.4 for Chalcogenide, ZrS 2 , Bismuth telluride thin film (p-type Bi 2 Te 3 /Sb 2 Te 3 superlattices) and 2.75 for Bismuth telluride thin film (Bi 2 Se 1.2 Te 1.8 ). Finally, the present paper investigates on the newest technology and strategies that are applied in this research area in order to enhance the TEG performance enhancement.