Advanced Thermoelectric Composite Materials: Design, Processing, and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, titled “Advanced Thermoelectric Composite Materials: Design, Processing, and Applications.” Thermoelectric materials have garnered significant attention for their ability to directly convert heat into electricity and vice versa, offering promising solutions for energy harvesting, thermal management, and waste heat recovery. However, conventional thermoelectric materials often suffer from limitations such as high thermal conductivity, mechanical brittleness, and challenges in scalability. To overcome these barriers, composite approaches have emerged as a powerful strategy to tailor transport properties, enhance mechanical integrity, and enable multifunctional performance.

This Special Issue aims to highlight the latest developments in thermoelectric composites, including hybrid systems, nanostructured architectures, and novel processing techniques that synergistically improve electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, and phonon scattering. Contributions addressing interface engineering, doping strategies, sustainability, and device-level integration are particularly welcome. We encourage submissions from both fundamental and applied research perspectives to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation in this rapidly evolving field.

Further, it aims to provide a focused platform for publishing original research and comprehensive reviews on thermoelectric composite materials, emphasizing the relationships between composite design, microstructure, and functional performance. As thermoelectric technologies become increasingly important for sustainable energy conversion and thermal energy harvesting, composite strategies have emerged as vital tools for overcoming the intrinsic limitations of conventional thermoelectric materials. These strategies involve combining different material phases such as ceramics, metals, polymers, and 2D nanomaterials to tailor charge and phonon transport, improve mechanical stability, and introduce multifunctional capabilities.

This thematic issue fits squarely within the scope of the Journal of Composites Science, which encourages interdisciplinary research on the design, processing, modeling, characterization, and application of composite systems. By focusing on the intersection of composite engineering and thermoelectric functionality, this Special Issue will appeal to researchers working in materials science, nanotechnology, energy engineering, and sustainable materials development. Topics may include, but are not limited to, phase and interface optimization, fabrication methods (e.g., spark plasma sintering, hot pressing, additive manufacturing), transport property tuning, mechanical performance evaluation, and composite integration into devices or modules.

In this Special Issue, original research articles, reviews, and communications are welcome. Research areas may include (but need not be limited to) the following themes:

• Design and synthesis of thermoelectric composite materials;
• Metal-ceramic, polymer–inorganic, and hybrid thermoelectric systems;
• Interface engineering for optimized carrier and phonon transport;
• Nanostructuring, doping, and defect modulation in composite architectures;
• Processing techniques: spark plasma sintering, hot pressing, additive manufacturing, etc.;
• Mechanical, thermal, and electrical characterization of thermoelectric composites;
• Modeling and simulation of transport mechanisms in composite systems;
• Integration of thermoelectric composites into devices for energy harvesting or cooling;
• Sustainability and life cycle analysis of composite thermoelectric materials.

We look forward to receiving your contributions to this exciting Special Issue.

Dr. Uday M. Basheer Al-Naib
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Composites Science is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.