Journal ArticleDOI
Nanostructured Thermoelectrics: Big Efficiency Gains from Small Features
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TLDR
This article sets out to summarize and clarify the current understanding in this field; explain the underpinnings of breakthroughs reported in the past decade; and provide a critical review of various concepts and experimental results related to nanostructured thermoelectrics.Abstract:
The field of thermoelectrics has progressed enormously and is now growing steadily because of recently demonstrated advances and strong global demand for cost-effective, pollution-free forms of energy conversion. Rapid growth and exciting innovative breakthroughs in the field over the last 10-15 years have occurred in large part due to a new fundamental focus on nanostructured materials. As a result of the greatly increased research activity in this field, a substantial amount of new data--especially related to materials--have been generated. Although this has led to stronger insight and understanding of thermoelectric principles, it has also resulted in misconceptions and misunderstanding about some fundamental issues. This article sets out to summarize and clarify the current understanding in this field; explain the underpinnings of breakthroughs reported in the past decade; and provide a critical review of various concepts and experimental results related to nanostructured thermoelectrics. We believe recent achievements in the field augur great possibilities for thermoelectric power generation and cooling, and discuss future paths forward that build on these exciting nanostructuring concepts.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities in Two-Dimensional Materials Beyond Graphene
Sheneve Z. Butler,Shawna M. Hollen,Linyou Cao,Yi Cui,Yi Cui,Jay Gupta,Humberto R. Gutierrez,Tony F. Heinz,Seung Sae Hong,Seung Sae Hong,Jiaxing Huang,Ariel Ismach,Ezekiel Johnston-Halperin,Masaru Kuno,Vladimir V. Plashnitsa,Richard D. Robinson,Rodney S. Ruoff,Sayeef Salahuddin,Jie Shan,Li Shi,Michael G. Spencer,Mauricio Terrones,Wolfgang Windl,Joshua E. Goldberger +23 more
TL;DR: The properties and advantages of single-, few-, and many-layer 2D materials in field-effect transistors, spin- and valley-tronics, thermoelectrics, and topological insulators, among many other applications are highlighted.
Journal ArticleDOI
Copper ion liquid-like thermoelectrics
Huili Liu,Xun Shi,Fangfang Xu,Linlin Zhang,Wenqing Zhang,Lidong Chen,Qiang Li,Ctirad Uher,Tristan Day,G. Jeffrey Snyder +9 more
TL;DR: The results indicate a new strategy and direction for high-efficiency thermoelectric materials by exploring systems where there exists a crystalline sublattice for electronic conduction surrounded by liquid-like ions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Rationally Designing High-Performance Bulk Thermoelectric Materials
TL;DR: This review describes the recent advances in designing high-performance bulk thermoelectric materials and highlights the decoupling of the electron and phonon transport through coherent interface, matrix/precipitate electronic bands alignment, and compositionally alloyed nanostructures.
Journal ArticleDOI
Advances in thermoelectric materials research: Looking back and moving forward
Jian He,Terry M. Tritt +1 more
TL;DR: The mechanisms and strategies for improving thermoelectric efficiency are reviewed and how to report material performance is discussed, as well as how to develop high-performance materials out of nontoxic and earth-abundant elements.
Journal ArticleDOI
Nanoscale thermal transport. II. 2003–2012
David G. Cahill,Paul V. Braun,Gang Chen,David R. Clarke,Shanhui Fan,Kenneth E. Goodson,Pawel Keblinski,William P. King,Gerald D. Mahan,Arun Majumdar,Humphrey J. Maris,Simon R. Phillpot,Eric Pop,Li Shi +13 more
TL;DR: In this article, a review of thermal transport at the nanoscale is presented, emphasizing developments in experiment, theory, and computation in the past ten years and summarizes the present status of the field.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cooling, heating, generating power, and recovering waste heat with thermoelectric systems.
TL;DR: 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.
Journal ArticleDOI
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.