Cooling, heating, generating power, and recovering waste heat with thermoelectric systems.
TLDR
Thermoelectric materials are solid-state energy converters whose combination of thermal, electrical, and semiconductor properties allows them to be used to convert waste heat into electricity or electrical power directly into cooling and heating.Abstract:
Thermoelectric materials are solid-state energy converters whose combination of thermal, electrical, and semiconducting properties allows them to be used to convert waste heat into electricity or electrical power directly into cooling and heating. These materials can be competitive with fluid-based systems, such as two-phase air-conditioning compressors or heat pumps, or used in smaller-scale applications such as in automobile seats, night-vision systems, and electrical-enclosure cooling. More widespread use of thermoelectrics requires not only improving the intrinsic energy-conversion efficiency of the materials but also implementing recent advancements in system architecture. These principles are illustrated with several proven and potential applications of thermoelectrics.read more
Citations
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Prospects of Colloidal Nanocrystals for Electronic and Optoelectronic Applications
TL;DR: Nanocrystals (NCs) discussed in this Review are tiny crystals of metals, semiconductors, and magnetic material consisting of hundreds to a few thousand atoms each that are among the hottest research topics of the last decades.
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Convergence of electronic bands for high performance bulk thermoelectrics
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that it is possible to direct the convergence of many valleys in a bulk material by tuning the doping and composition, leading to an extraordinary zT value of 1.8 at about 850 kelvin.
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New and Old Concepts in Thermoelectric Materials
TL;DR: The most promising bulk materials with emphasis on results from the last decade are described and the new opportunities for enhanced performance bulk nanostructured composite materials are examined and a look into the not so distant future is attempted.
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Bulk nanostructured thermoelectric materials: current research and future prospects
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce the principles and present status of bulk nanostructured materials, then describe some of the unanswered questions about carrier transport and how current research is addressing these questions.
References
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Complex thermoelectric materials.
TL;DR: A new era of complex thermoelectric materials is approaching because of modern synthesis and characterization techniques, particularly for nanoscale materials, and the strategies used to improve the thermopower and reduce the thermal conductivity are reviewed.
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Thin-film thermoelectric devices with high room-temperature figures of merit
TL;DR: Th thin-film thermoelectric materials are reported that demonstrate a significant enhancement in ZT at 300 K, compared to state-of-the-art bulk Bi2Te3 alloys, and the combination of performance, power density and speed achieved in these materials will lead to diverse technological applications.
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High-Thermoelectric Performance of Nanostructured Bismuth Antimony Telluride Bulk Alloys
Bed Poudel,Qing Hao,Yi Ma,Yucheng Lan,Austin J. Minnich,Bo Yu,Xiao Yan,Dezhi Wang,Andrew Muto,Daryoosh Vashaee,Xiaoyuan Chen,Jun-Ming Liu,Mildred S. Dresselhaus,Gang Chen,Zhifeng Ren +14 more
TL;DR: Electrical transport measurements, coupled with microstructure studies and modeling, show that the ZT improvement is the result of low thermal conductivity caused by the increased phonon scattering by grain boundaries and defects, which makes these materials useful for cooling and power generation.