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Filled skutterudites R x Co 4 Sb 12 are excellent n-type thermoelectric materials owing to their high electronic mobility and high effective mass, combined with low thermal conductivity associated with the addition of filler atoms into the void site. The favourable electronic band structure in n-type CoSb 3 is typically attributed to threefold degeneracy at the conduction band minimum accompanied by linear band behaviour at higher carrier concentrations, which is thought to be related to the increase in effective mass as the doping level increases. Using combined experimental and computational studies, we show instead that a secondary conduction band with 12 conducting carrier pockets (which converges with the primary band at high temperatures) is responsible for the extraordinary thermoelectric performance of n-type CoSb 3 skutterudites. A theoretical explanation is also provided as to why the linear (or Kane-type) band feature is not beneficial for thermoelectrics. It is shown that the large thermoelectric capability of CoSb 3 skutterudite can be associated with a secondary conduction band with high valley degeneracy, which can converge with the light conduction band at high temperatures.

In this article, I propose a three-stage estimation model to examine the effect of parental divorce on the development of children's cognitive skills and noncognitive traits. Using a framework that includes pre-, in-, and post-divorce time periods, I disentangle the complex factors affecting children of divorce. I use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class 1998 to 1999 (ECLS-K), a multiwave longitudinal dataset, to assess the three-stage model. To evaluate the parameters of interest more rigorously, I employ a stage-specific ordinary least squares (OLS) model, a counterfactual matching estimator, and a piece-wise growth curve model. Within some combinations of developmental domains and stages, in particular from the in-divorce stage onward, I find negative effects of divorce even after accounting for selection factors that influence children's skills and traits at or before the beginning of the dissolution process. These negative outcomes do not appear to intensify or abate in the ensuing study period.

Printing techniques could offer a scalable approach to fabricate thermoelectric (TE) devices on flexible substrates for power generation used in wearable devices and personalized thermo-regulation. However, typical printing processes need a large concentration of binder additives, which often render a detrimental effect on electrical transport of the printed TE layers. Here, we report scalable screen-printing of TE layers on flexible fiber glass fabrics, by rationally optimizing the printing inks consisting of TE particles (p-type Bi 0.5 Sb 1.5 Te 3 or n-type Bi 2 Te 2.7 Se 0.3 ), binders, and organic solvents. We identified a suitable binder additive, methyl cellulose, which offers suitable viscosity for printability at a very small concentration (0.45–0.60 wt.%), thus minimizing its negative impact on electrical transport. Following printing, the binders were subsequently burnt off via sintering and hot pressing. We found that the nanoscale defects left behind after the binder burnt off became effective phonon scattering centers, leading to low lattice thermal conductivity in the printed n-type material. With the high electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity, the screen-printed TE layers showed high room-temperature ZT values of 0.65 and 0.81 for p-type and n-type, respectively.

Purpose Creating superior customer experience quality is important to firm success, but the link between customer experience quality and customer-to-customer interaction quality – a critical component of customer experience quality in mass service settings – has seldom been spotlighted. This paper aims to propose and test a theoretical model of the relationship among three types of customer-to-customer interaction quality (friend-interaction, neighboring customer-interaction and audience-interaction) and customer experience quality. They also examine these variables’ effects on customer citizenship behavior in mass service settings. Design/methodology/approach The authors collected data through a self-administered survey. The proposed relationships were tested using structural equation modeling. Findings Friend-interaction and audience-interaction quality perceptions significantly influence customer experience quality, with neighboring customer-interaction quality perception significant only for low communication quality. We find that enhancing customer experience quality is crucial to promoting citizenship behavior in mass service settings. Practical implications Neighboring customer-interaction quality perception has a significant effect on customer experience quality, particularly in a low communication quality situation. Therefore, service marketers should provide effective neighboring customer-interaction management schemes to enhance experience quality together with friend-interaction and audience-interaction management schemes when customers experience low communication quality. Additionally, service marketers should focus on enhancing communication quality only when anticipating low neighboring customer-interaction quality. Originality/value The findings highlight the effects of three types of customer-to-customer interaction quality on customer citizenship behavior through experience quality perception in mass service settings, and the effect of neighboring customer-interaction quality perception on customer experience quality, moderated by communication quality.

Double half‐Heuslers comprising two aliovalent half‐Heuslers are promising candidates for thermoelectric materials because of their intrinsically low lattice thermal conductivity; however, poor electronic transport properties need to be overcome. Herein, the effects of Sn doping on the electronic and thermal transport properties of p‐type Ti2FeNiSb2 to enhance the thermoelectric performance via the compositional tuning route are investigated. The power factor is significantly improved owing to the synergetic effect of the increase in the density‐of‐states effective mass and the carrier concentration. In addition, the lattice thermal conductivity is slightly reduced, benefitted from intensified phonon scattering due to lattice disordering by Sn substitution at the Sb‐site. A peak figure of merit (zT) of ≈0.28 is obtained at 973 K in Ti2FeNiSb1.8Sn0.2, which is almost twice higher than that of the pristine Ti2FeNiSb2. High thermoelectric conversion efficiency is obtained in p‐type Ti2FeNiSb2 with double half‐Heusler structure by doping of Sn at Sb‐site. Electronic transport properties are improved due to the synergetic effect of the increase in the density‐of‐states effective mass and the carrier concentration. Simultaneously, lattice thermal conductivity is reduced benefitted from intensified phonon scattering due to lattice disordering by Sn substitution.

Bi 2 Se 3 alloys are considered promising thermoelectric materials for application at ambient to moderately high temperatures. However, because of the narrow band gap ( E g ) of Bi 2 Se 3 -based materials, bipolar conduction dominates and impairs their thermoelectric performance at elevated temperatures. In this study, we investigated the electrical and thermal transport properties of Bi 2 Se 3 alloyed with indium (In) by incorporating as much as 50% In in the ((Bi 1- x In x ) 2 Se 3 , where x  = 0, 0.125, 0.25, 0.375, and 0.5) compositions, which widen the E g of the Bi 2 Se 3 . Analysis of the activation energy, the Goldsmid−Sharp E g , and optical E g revealed that E g might gradually become wider with increasing In content. This gradual widening of E g led to a corresponding gradual decrease in the carrier concentration. However, the heaving doping of In induces an exponential decrease in the mobility, which resulted in an significant decrease in the electrical conductivity and power factor. The lattice thermal conductivity decreased significantly owing to strong phonon scattering by the heavy In doping and the bipolar thermal conductivity appeared to be reduced. Overall, a thermoelectric figure of merit is significantly reduced for the heavily In-doped Bi 2 Se 3 mainly due to significant reduction of the mobility. Although the significant reduction in κ latt and κ bp was observed. Therefore, further theoretical analysis based on a two-band model was performed to further investigate the estimated correlation on the electrical and thermal transport properties of Bi 2 Se 3 and its E g .

Interoperability between different virtual platforms requires the ability to search and transfer digital assets across platforms. Digital assets in virtual platforms are represented in different forms or modalities, such as images, meshes, and point clouds. The cross-modal retrieval of three-dimensional (3D) object representations is challenging due to data representation diversity, making common feature space discovery difficult. Recent studies have been focused on obtaining feature consistency within the same classes and modalities using cross-modal center loss. However, center features are sensitive to hyperparameter variations, making cross-modal center loss susceptible to performance degradation. This paper proposes a new 3D cross-modal retrieval method that uses cross-modal supervised contrastive learning (CSupCon) and the fixed projection head (FPH) strategy. Contrastive learning mitigates the influence of hyperparameters by maximizing feature distinctiveness. The FPH strategy prevents gradient updates in the projection network, enabling the focused training of the backbone networks. The proposed method shows a mean average precision (mAP) increase of 1.17 and 0.14 in 3D cross-modal object retrieval experiments using ModelNet10 and ModelNet40 datasets compared to state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods.

Incorporation of a foreign element is considered as a promising approach to enhance the performance of thermoelectric materials since this can either improve the power factor by a band structure modification or reduce the thermal conductivity by a phonon scattering strengthening. We fabricated the polycrystalline bulk samples of Cu-incorporated Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 by melt spinning and spark plasma sintering, and evaluated the electronic and thermal transport properties. From the phase analysis and thermoelectric properties measurement, we found that most of the added excess Cu atoms were substituted at a Sb-site and a small amount of Cu was intercalated at the van der Waals gap between quintuple layers. By the formation of two different point defects (substituted Cu and intercalated Cu), the thermoelectric power factor was enhanced because of the increased density of states effective mass, and simultaneously reduced thermal conductivity originated from the intensified phonon scattering and suppressed bipolar contribution. Maximum thermoelectric figure of merit zT of 1.13 was obtained at 400 K.

Recent studies have revealed the outstanding thermoelectric performance of Bi-doped n-type SnSe. In this regard, we analyzed the band parameters for Sn1−xBixSe (x = 0.00, 0.02, 0.04, and 0.06) using simple equations and the Single Parabolic Band model. Bi doping suppresses the carrier-phonon coupling while increasing the density-of-states effective mass. The n-type SnSe is known to have two conduction bands converge near 600 K. Bi doping changes the temperature at which the band convergence occurs. When x = 0.04, its weighted mobility maximized near 500 K, which indicated the possible band convergence. The highest zT of the x = 0.04 sample at mid-temperatures (473–573 K) can be attributed to the engineered band convergence via Bi doping.

TiS 2 is a transition metal dichalcogenide with semiconducting transport properties, and is considered a potential thermoelectric material owing to its relatively low lattice thermal conductivity originated from van der Waals stacking. In this study, the evolution of electrical and thermal transport properties of TiS 2 by solid solution alloying with TiSe 2 are investigated systematically regarding thermoelectric properties. A series of solid solution compositions of Ti(S 1 − x Se x ) 2 ( x = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5) polycrystalline samples was synthesized by a conventional solid-state reaction, wherein no secondary phase was formed. As x increased, the electrical conductivity and carrier concentration gradually increased, while the Seebeck coefficient decreased. Consequently, the power factor decreased. On the other hand, the lattice thermal conductivity is reduced largely to 0.96 W/mK for x = 0.5 at 300 K, compared to 2.3 W/mK for the pristine TiS 2 sample. Consequently, the thermoelectric figure of merit zT of TiS 2 was enhanced by solid solution allying with TiSe 2 , despite deterioration of the electrical transport properties. The maximum zT of 0.41 was observed for x = 0.4 (Ti(S 0.6 Se 0.4 ) 2 ) at 500 K.