Related papers: Thermoelectric Devices: Cooling and Power Generati…
Nanoscale conductors are interesting for thermoelectrics because of their particular spectral features connecting separated heat and particle currents. Multiterminal devices in the quantum regime benefit from phase-coherent phenomena, which…
Thermoelectric effects, such as the generation of a particle current by a temperature gradient, have their origin in a reversible coupling between heat and particle flows. These effects are fundamental probes for materials and have…
The energy dependent thermoelectric response of a single molecule contains valuable information about its transmission function and its excited states. However, measuring it requires devices that can efficiently heat up one side of the…
The possibility of using quantum Hall systems for thermoelectric energy conversion is investigated. It is shown that the massive degeneracy and the metallicity of a partially-filled Landau level enable thermoelectric cooling and power…
Lack of materials which are thermoelectrically efficient and economically attractive is a challenge in thermoelectricity. Silicon could be a good thermoelectric material offering CMOS compatibility, harmlessness and cost reduction but it…
Improvement of thermoelectric systems in terms of performance and range of applications relies on progress in materials science and optimization of device operation. In this chapter, we focuse on optimization by taking into account the…
During recent years, microelectronics helped to develop complex and varied technologies. It appears that many of these technologies can be applied successfully to realize Seebeck micro generators: photolithography and deposition methods…
More than half of the waste heat rejected into the environment has temperatures lower than 100 $^\circ C$, which accounts for nearly 85 PWh/year worldwide. Efficiently harvesting low-grade heat could be a promising step toward carbon…
The bottleneck in modern thermoelectric power generation and cooling is the low energy conversion efficiency of thermoelectric materials. The detrimental effects of lattice phonons on performance can be mitigated, but achieving a high…
Power electronics systems, widely used in various applications such as industrial automation, electric cars, and renewable energy, have the primary function of converting and controlling electrical power to the desired type of load. Despite…
The principles of the thermoelectric phenomenon, including Seebeck effect, Peltier effect, and Thomson effect are discussed. The dependence of the thermoelectric devices on the figure of merit, Seebeck coefficient, electrical conductivity,…
This paper introduces a new semi-flexible device able to turn thermal gradients into electricity by using a curved bimetal coupled to an electret-based converter. In fact, a two-steps conversion is carried out: (i) a curved bimetal turns…
Thermoelectric materials intrigue much interest due to their wide range of application such as power generators and refrigerators. The efficiency of thermoelectric materials is quantified by the figure of merit, and a figure greater than…
Thermoelectric materials can convert thermal energy into electricity, making them promising candidates for harvesting waste heat, an increasingly important challenge in the energy-intensive modern world. The search for improved…
Thermoelectric energy harvesters can have a much higher conversion efficiency by implementing quantum dots/wells between the high temperature region and the low temperature region. However they still suffer a limitation of the maximum…
Thermoelectrics involves both the generation of electrical power from heat flow, and the efficient refrigeration using electricity, which has been intensively focused on for two decades. The performance of thermoelectric power generation…
It is shown that equations for electrical current in solid-state thermionic and thermoelectric devices converge for devices with a width equal to the mean free path of electrons, yielding a common expression for intensive electronic…
Superconducting interfaces have recently been demonstrated to contain a rich variety of effects that give rise to sizable thermoelectric responses and unexpected thermal properties, despite traditionally being considered poor…
This paper introduces a thermal energy harvester turning thermal gradients into electricity by coupling a bimetallic strip to an electret-based converter: the bimetallic strip behaves as a thermal-to-mechanical power converter turning…
Heat resources of small temperature difference are easily accessible, free and unlimited on earth. Thermoelectric effects provide the technology for converting these heat resources directly into electricity. We present designs of…