Inside Front Cover: Volume 5 Issue 2

Abstract

Inside Front Cover: The cover image of doi: 10.1002/idm2.70033 illustrates the concept of “Designer Entropy”—a chemically guided paradigm for thermoelectric materials that moves beyond indiscriminate compositional complexity to targeted compositional intelligence. The bifurcated crystal structure depicts two distinct alloying pathways in a SnTe(GeSe)_0.25 matrix: Sb doping (left, near-matched atomic radius) preserves electronic transport and delivers ~20% higher output power, while Bi doping (right, large radius/mass mismatch) maximizes phonon scattering but suppresses carrier mobility. Despite achieving nearly identical conversion efficiencies (~5.7%), the two pathways produce markedly different power outputs, demonstrating that high zT does not guarantee high power and that rational element selection is essential for co-optimizing thermoelectric performance.