Effect of surface micro- and nanolayers of composite particles on   thermoelectric figure of merit (phenomenological approach)
  Non-symmetric variants of self-consistent field theory are proposed that served the basis for theoretical investigation of the effect of thermal conductivity of composite particles surface layers on the effective thermoelectric figure of merit. It is shown that in some cases thermoelectric figure of merit can be essentially improved due to the presence of a shell. 
A.A. Snarskii, M.I. Zhenirovskyy
cond-mat.mtrl-sci cond-mat.dis-nn