The research on skutterudites in the last few years has contributed to a better understanding of the physical processes which play an important role in enhancing their thermoelectric performance and to the discovery of novel filled compounds, with one of the most promising zT values at intermediate temperatures. Skutterudites are still an ongoing field of research, and an improvement of their efficiencies, stabilities, contacts, industrial scalable fabrication processes and other factors are expected in the near future in order to develop viable modules for intermediate temperature range applications, such as in the automobile industry, factories or incinerators. This paper gives a review on the status of research in the field of skutterudites.

According to the EU-Directives 2002/95/EC, 2002/96/EC, lead-based piezoceramics must be substituted in the future with more environmentally friendly alternatives, only when a reliable alternative is found. This is why an increasing interest has grown in the research community to find lead free piezoelectric materials that fulfil the requirements for this substitution. Different families of compounds have been shown to be possible candidates for this use, such as bismuth and niobates based perovskites, pyrochlores, etc. However, a material with piezoelectric coefficients similar to those of PZT (lead zirconate titanate, Pb[Zr_xTi_1-x]O₃) has not been yet found. Besides, each of these families has its specific characteristics in terms of remnant polarization, coercive field or application temperature. Thus, the choice of each material should be made according to the specific needs of the application. In this sense, Aurivillius-type structure materials (also known as Bismuth Layered Structure Ferroelectrics, BLSF) can take advantage of their specific properties for uses as Lead Free Piezoelectric systems. Some of them have a high Curie temperature, which make them good candidates to be used as high temperature piezoelectrics; high coercive fields, which facilitates their use as actuators; or a high switching fatigue resistance, which can be useful for future applications as Ferroelectric Random Access Memories (FERAM).