Tonic thermoelectric materials – powering future technology

Powering from the Future

Bulk nanostructured thermoelectric materials: current research and future prospects

Thermoelectrics have long been recognized as a potentially transformative energy conversion technology due to their ability to convert heat directly into electricity. Despite this potential, thermoelectric devices are not in common use because of their low efficiency, and today they are only used in niche markets where reliability and simplicity are more important than performance. However, the...

Porous Thermoelectric Materials

Thermoelectric materials are sometimes prepared using a sintering process in which the achievement of a high density is often one of the objectives. However, it has recently been shown that the introduction of a highly porous material is desirable in synthetic transverse thermoelements. Porosity may also be an advantage in conventional longitudinal thermoelectric modules in which a high thermal...

Thermoelectric Transport in Nanoscale Materials

Measurements of thermoelectric transport coefficients yield important information regarding fundamental properties of a system in addition to the information supplied from the electronic transport measurements. In this thesis we report gate dependent and temperature dependent conductance (G) and thermoelectric power (TEP) measurements made in three different basic nanomaterials: single-walled n...

Recent advances on thermoelectric materials

By converting waste heat into electricity through the thermoelectric power of solids without producing greenhouse gas emissions, thermoelectric generators could be an important part of the solution to today’s energy challenge. There has been a resurgence in the search for new materials for advanced thermoelectric energy conversion applications. In this paper, we will review recent efforts on im...