Thermoelectric materials have gained wide attention to realize multilevel efficient energy management to alleviate the increasingly severe energy crisis. Oxide ceramics were well-explored as potential thermoelectric candidates because of their outstanding merits, including abundance, eco-friendliness, high-temperature stability, and chemical stability. In this work, we aim to provide a comprehensive summary of the diversified state-of-the-art oxide ceramics and establish the links between composition designing, preparation process, structural characteristics, and properties to summarize the underlying chemistry and physics mechanism of band engineering, doping, composited with the second phase, defects engineering, and entropy engineering. Furthermore, advanced device design and applications such as thermoelectric modules, miniature generators, sensors, and coolers were reviewed. Ultimately, the challenges and future perspective of oxides ceramics for the device design and thermoelectric applications in the development of energy harvesting technology have been prospected.

The conductivity and the Hall coefficient of nanostructured TiN films synthesized by nonreactive RF magnetron sputtering have been experimentally studied. The mechanism of conductivity and the role of grain size are discussed.

A huge concern regarding global warming, as well as the depletion of natural fuel resources, has led to a wide search for alternative energy sources. Due to their high reliability and long operation time, thermoelectric generators are of significant interest for waste heat recovery and power generation. The main disadvantage of TEGs is the low efficiency of thermoelectric commercial modules. In this work, a unique design for a multilayer TE unicouple is suggested for an operating temperature range of 50–600 °C. Two types of thermoelectric materials were selected: «low temperature» n-and p-type TE materials (for the operating temperature range of 50–300 °C) based on Bi₂Te₃ compounds and «middle temperature» (for the operating temperature range of 300–600 °C) n- and p-type TE materials based on the PbTe compound. The hot extrusion technology was applied to fabricate n- and p-type low-temperature TE materials. A unique design of multilayer TEG was experienced to achieve an efficiency of up to 15%. This allows for the possibility of extracting this amount of electrical power from the heat generated for domestic and water heating.