Alloying to increase the band gap for improving thermoelectric properties of Ag2Te

Ag2Te simultaneously shows high mobility and low thermal conductivity, however the relatively low band gap of similar to 0.2 eV prevents it from achieving high thermoelectric figure of merit, zT, in the high temperature phase. In this study, the band gap of Ag2Te has been increased enabling a zT of unity by forming alloys and composites with PbTe, thereby demonstrating the importance of exploiting potentially good thermoelectrics among these small band gap semiconductors and similar materials.