Thermoelectric technology generates electricity from waste heat, but one bottleneck for wider use is the performance of thermoelectric materials. Manipulating the configurational entropy of a material by introducing different atomic species can tune phase composition and extend the performance optimization space. We enhanced the figure of merit (zT) value to 1.8 at 900 kelvin in an n-type PbSe-based high-entropy material formed by entropy-driven structural stabilization. The largely distorted lattices in this high-entropy system caused unusual shear strains, which provided strong phonon scattering to largely lower lattice thermal conductivity. The thermoelectric conversion efficiency was 12.3% at temperature difference ΔT = 507 kelvin, for the fabricated segmented module based on this n-type high-entropy material. Our demonstration provides a paradigm to improve thermoelectric performance for high-entropy thermoelectric materials through entropy engineering.

热电技术通过废热发电，但是热电材料的性能是广泛使用的一个瓶颈。通过引入不同的原子种类来操纵材料的构型熵可以调整相组成并扩展性能优化空间。我们将由熵驱动的结构稳定作用形成的n型基于PbSe的高熵材料的900开尔文的品质因数（zT）值提高到1.8。在这种高熵系统中，晶格畸变导致不寻常的剪切应变，从而产生强烈的声子散射，从而大大降低了晶格的热导率。在温差ΔT下，热电转换效率为12.3％= 507开尔文，用于基于这种n型高熵材料制造的分段模块。我们的演示提供了一种通过熵工程来改进高熵热电材料的热电性能的范例。