G . Jeffrey Snyder * and Eric
نویسنده
چکیده
!e world’s demand for energy is causing a dramatic escalation of social and political unrest. Likewise, the environmental impact of global climate change due to the combustion of fossil fuels is becoming increasingly alarming. One way to improve the sustainability of our electricity base is through the scavenging of waste heat with thermoelectric generators (Box 1). Home heating, automotive exhaust, and industrial processes all generate an enormous amount of unused waste heat that could be converted to electricity by using thermoelectrics. As thermoelectric generators are solid-state devices with no moving parts, they are silent, reliable and scalable, making them ideal for small, distributed power generation1. E"orts are already underway to replace the alternator in cars with a thermoelectric generator mounted on the exhaust stream, thereby improving fuel e#ciency2. Advances in thermoelectrics could similarly enable the replacement of compression-based refrigeration with solid-state Peltier coolers3. !ermoelectrics have long been too ine#cient to be coste"ective in most applications4. However, a resurgence of interest in thermoelectrics began in the mid 1990s when theoretical predictions suggested that thermoelectric e#ciency could be greatly enhanced through nanostructural engineering, which led to experimental e"orts to demonstrate the proof-of-principle and high-e#ciency materials5,6. At the same time, complex bulk materials (such as skutterudites7, clathrates8 and Zintl phases9) have been explored and found that high e#ciencies could indeed be obtained. Here, we review these recent advances, looking at how disorder and complexity within the unit cell as well as nanostructured materials can lead to enhanced e#ciency. !is survey allows us to $nd common traits in these materials, and distill rational design strategies for the discovery of materials with high thermoelectric e#ciency. More comprehensive reviews on thermoelectric materials are well covered in several books1,10–12 and articles3,5,6,8,13–18.
منابع مشابه
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Traditional thermoelectric cooling relies on the Peltier effect which produces a temperature drop limited by the figure of merit, zT. This cooling limit is not required from classical thermodynamics but can be traced to problems of thermoelectric compatibility. Alternatively, if a thermoelectric cooler can be designed to achieve full thermoelectric compatibility, lower temperature can be achiev...
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تاریخ انتشار 2010