1 I have not calculated new pairs myself, but I have posted all information you need to figure this out. You will need the explanation by Champion how the math works. In this post I have also included the CRC handbook to look up needed data for the mentioned formulas. And then you need the specific data for each elelemt, which I have posted here: General Table of Phonon Resonance.
2 The phonon resonance temperature and melting points of materials are two different things, at least in my limited understanding. The key lies in the handling of mixing the needed materials together in a way that contact area is maximised, the materials are contained, and required gases or surplus gases can enter/exit the compound.
3 Great questions! It is known that temperature levels can lie only a few °C apart to produce different target materials. So the temperature needs to be fairly accurate. A great deal of my work has gone into building low budget, but high precision temperature chambers to control temperature down to a few °C. This is acutally more difficult as one would think. However, it is easy to achieve once you know how to deal with temperature gradients, probes and control circuits.
Most amateur researchers neither have the budget to buy commercial units that can cost several thousand dollars, nor the knowledge or skills to build their own temperature chambers from scratch. I would estimate that a basic unit could be build for around $500. I am also working on very simple and cheap setups, that can be used by anyone.
