Cobalt oxides as potential thermoelectric elements: The influence of the dimensionality

2D misfit cobalt oxides combine a metallic behaviour at room temperature with a large thermopower, close to +90- +165/spl mu/V/K depending on the composition. High temperature measurements have shown that these good properties persist up to 800K, which makes them interesting for high temperature applications as p-type legs. The results for the different misfit phases investigated will be presented. Other families of cobalt oxides with different kinds of structure, 1D or 2D, have been investigated in order to improve the figure of merit and to find n-type thermoelectric materials and some promising results will be shown. Also, measurements of manganese oxides at high temperature have been made to show their potentiality as n-type legs.