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The design of uranium-based thermoelectric materials presents a novel andintriguing strategy for directly converting nuclear heat into electrical power.Using high-level first-principles approach combined with accurate solution ofBoltzmann transport equation, we demonstrate that a giant n-type power factorof 13.8 mW/mK^2 and a peak ZT value of 2.2 can be realized in the heavy-fermionUN2 compound at 700 K. Such promising thermoelectric performance arises fromthe large degeneracy (Nv=14) of heavy conduction band coupled with weakelectron-phonon interactions, which is in principle governed by the strongCoulomb correlation among the partially filled U-5f electrons in theface-centered cubic structure. Collectively, our theoretical work suggests thatthe energetic UN2 is an excellent alternative to efficient radioisotope powerconversion, which also uncovers an underexplored area for thermoelectricresearch.

High figure-of-merit in the heavy-fermion UN2 system for radioisotope thermoelectric applications