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Recently, the coupling of ferroelectrics with electrochemical reactions has attracted increasing interest for harvesting waste heat. The change of polarisation of a ferroelectric with temperature can be used to influence chemical reactions,…
Searching for performant multiferroic materials attracts general research interests in energy science as they have been increasingly exploited as the conversion media among thermal, electric, magnetic and mechanical energies by using their…
Pyroelectric energy converter is a functional capacitor using pyroelectric material as the dielectric layer. Utilizing the first-order phase transformation of the material, the pyroelectric device can generate adequate electricity within…
We analyse a device aimed at the conversion of heat into electrical energy, based on a closed cycle in which a distiller generates two solutions at different concentrations, and an electrochemical cell consumes the concentration difference,…
Modeling ferroelectric materials from first principles is one of the successes of density-functional theory, and the driver of much development effort, requiring an accurate description of the electronic processes and the thermodynamic…
The ferroelectric material usually exhibits temperature dependent spontaneous polarization, known as pyroelectricity, which can be used to directly convert thermal energy to electricity from ambient low-grade waste heat. When utilizing the…
In this work, a new concept for the conversion of heat into electricity is presented. The conversion is based on the combined effects of a thermoacoustic prime mover coupled with a magnetohydrodynamic generator, using different working…
Phase-transforming pyroelectric materials have emerged as promising candidates for low-grade thermal energy harvesting. However, whether first-order transformations with large pyroelectric coefficient or second-order transformations with…
Pyroelectric crystals are used to produce self-focused electron beams with energies greater than 170 keV. No high voltage power supply or electron gun is needed. The system works by simply changing the temperature of a crystal of LiNbO3 or…
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…
The thermoelectric performance of a topological energy converter is analyzed. The H-shaped device is based on a combination of transverse topological effects involving the spin: the inverse spin Hall effect and the spin Nernst effect. The…
We use molecular dynamics with a first-principles based shell model potential to study pyroelec- tricity in lithium niobate. We find that the primary pyroelectric effect is dominant, and pyroelec- tricity can be understood simply from the…
Thermomechanical cycles with a ferroelectric working substance convert heat to electrical energy. As shown here, magnetoelectrically coupled ferroelectric/ferromangtic composites (also called multiferroics) add new functionalities and allow…
This paper presents a new device able to turn thermal gradients into electricity by using a bimetal-based heat engine coupled to an electrostatic converter. A two-steps conversion is performed: (i) a curved bimetallic strip turns the…
The temperature dependence of the dielectric permittivity is taken into account to study the energy change in a capacitor that follows a cycle between a cold and a hot thermal reservoirs. There is a net energy gain in the process that, in…
Thermal-electric conversion is crucial for smart energy control and harvesting, such as thermal sensing and waste heat recovering. So far, people are aware of two main ways of direct thermal-electric conversion, Seebeck and pyroelectric…
We report modifications of the ferroelectric and electrocaloric properties of BaTiO$_3$ by defects. For this purpose, we have combined \textit{ab initio}-based molecular dynamics simulations with a simple model for defects. We find that…
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…
We propose a charge pump which converts solar energy into DC electricity. It is based on cyclic changes in the spontaneous electric polarization of a photoferroelectric material, which allows a transfer of charge from a low to a high…
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…