Related papers: The thermoelectric conversion efficiency problem: …
So far, the efficiency of thermoelectric energy conversion remains low compared to traditional technologies, such as coal or nuclear. This low efficiency can be explained by connecting the thermoelastic properties of the electronic working…
Thermoelectric devices are heat engines, which operate as generators or refrigerators using the conduction electrons as a working fluid. The thermoelectric heat-to-work conversion efficiency has always been typically quite low, but much…
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 devices that utilize the Seebeck effect convert heat flow into electrical energy and are highly desirable for the development of portable, solid state, passively-powered electronic systems. The conversion efficiencies of such…
Solid-state thermoelectric devices are currently used in applications ranging from thermocouple sensors to power generators in satellites, to portable air-conditioners and refrigerators. With the ever-rising demand throughout the world for…
The quest for high-efficiency heat-to-electricity conversion has been one of the major driving forces towards renewable energy production for the future. Efficient thermoelectric devices require high voltage generation from a temperature…
Thermoelectric energy conversion is a direct but low-efficiency process, which precludes the development of long-awaited wide-scale applications. As a breakthrough permitting a drastic performance increase is seemingly out of reach, we…
By converting waste heat into electricity through the thermoelectric power of solids without producing greenhouse gas emissions, thermoelectric generators could be an important part of the solution to today's energy challenge. There has…
Organic semiconductors have attracted increasing interest as thermoelectric converters in recent years due to their intrinsically low thermal conductivity compared to inorganic materials. This boom has led to encouraging practical results,…
Recent discovery of new materials for thermoelectric energy conversion is enabled by efficient prediction of materials' performance from first-principles, without empirically fitted parameters. The novel simplified approach for computing…
Nano-structuring is an extremely promising path to high performance thermoelectrics. Favorable improvements in thermal conductivity are attainable in many material systems, and theoretical work points to large improvements in electronic…
In typical thermoelectric energy harvesters and sensors, the Seebeck effect is caused by diffusion of electrons or holes in a temperature gradient. However, the Seebeck effect can also have a phonon drag component, due to momentum exchange…
While the thermoelectric figure of merit zT above 300K has seen significant improvement recently, the progress at lower temperatures has been slow, mainly limited by the relatively low Seebeck coefficient and high thermal conductivity. Here…
We examine the efficiency of an effective two-terminal thermoelectric device under broken time-reversal symmetry. The setup is derived from a three-terminal thermoelectric device comprising a thermal terminal and two electronic contacts,…
A fundamental understanding of phonon transport in stanene is crucial to predict the thermal performance in potential stanene-based devices. By combining first-principle calculation and phonon Boltzmann transport equation, we obtain the…
Thermoelectrics (TE) materials manifest themselves in direct conversion of temperature differences to electric power and vice versa. Despite remarkable advances have been achieved in the past decades for various TE systems, the energy…
Electron-phonon interaction (EPI) is presumably detrimental for thermoelectric performance in semiconductors because it limits carrier mobility. Here we show that enhanced EPI with strong energy dependence offers an intrinsic pathway to…
The conventional thermoelectric figure of merit and the power factor are not sufficient as a measure of thin film quality of thermoelectric materials, where the power conversion efficiency depends on the film dimensions. By considering the…
Prior ultralow thermal conductivity materials are not suitable for thermoelectric applications due to the limited electronic transport in the materials. Here, we present a new class of ultralow thermal conductivity materials with…
Thermoelectric materials convert heat into electricity through thermally driven charge transport in solids, or vice versa for cooling. To be competitive with conventional energy-generation technologies, a thermoelectric material must…