Theoretical work of two decades ago adequately explained the transport behavior and effectively guided the development of thermoelectric materials of high conversion efficiencies of conventional semiconductors (e.g., SiGe alloys). The more significant contributions involved the estimation of optimum doping concentrations, the reduction of thermal conductivity by solid solution doping and the development of a variety of materials with ZT approx. 1 in the temperature range 300 K to 1200 K. It was also shown that ZT approx. 1 is not a theoretical limitation although, experimentally, values in excess of one were not achieved. Work has continued with emphasis on higher temperature energy conversion. A number of promising materials have been discovered in which it appears that ZT > 1 is realizable. These materials can be divided into two classes: (i) the rare-earth chalcogenides, which behave as itinerant highly-degenerate n-type semiconductors at room-temperature, and (ii) the boron-rich borides, which exhibit p-type small-polaronic hopping conductivity.

The advantages of pulsed excimer lasers for semiconductor processing are reviewed. Extensive comparisons of the quality of annealing of ion-implanted Si obtained with XeCl and ruby lasers have been made. The results indicate that irrespective of the large differences in the optical properties of Si at uv and visible wavelengths, the efficiency of usage of the incident energy for annealing is comparable for the two lasers. However, because of the excellent optical beam quality, the XeCl laser can provide superior control of the surface melting and the resulting junction depth. Furthermore, the concentrations of electrically active point defects in the XeCl laser annealed region are 2 to 3 orders of magnitude lower than that obtained from ruby or Nd:YAG lasers. All these results seem to suggest that XeCl lasers should be suitable for fabricating not only solar cells but also the more advanced device structures required for VLSI or VHSIC applications.