In an attempt to overcome some of the drawbacks to the combustion of fossil fuel – such as a large carbon footprint and non-renewability – thermoelectric generators (TGs) have gained a considerable attention as a sustainable alternative technology, since they are environmentally friendly and have the ability of recycling abundant waste heat. Nanostructuring of thermoelectric materials can improve the dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) due to their abilities to independently control phonon scattering and energy-dependent scattering of electrical carriers. In comparison to different semiconductors for thermoelectric materials (e.g. IV and III-IV groups), chalcogens and metal chalcogenides show a lower lattice thermal energy due to their relatively large atomic masses and complex crystal structures, resulting in higher values of ZT.

Among various methods employed to synthesize chalcogen and metal chalcogenide nanostructures, electrochemical methods exhibit many advantages, such as the ability to control composition, grain size, and crystallinity including defects, and near room temperature deposition conditions. In this work, we will discuss the electrochemical synthesis of chalcogens and metal chalcogenides and correlate the structure with thermoelectric properties.