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Nanostructured Thermoelectric Materials

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Thermoelectric Nanomaterials

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Materials Science ((SSMATERIALS,volume 182))

Abstract

Thermoelectric energy conversion technique has been used as the power supply for the deep-space exploring missions, now showing notable advantages to harvest the widely distributed waste heat and convert the abundant solar energy into electricity. Recent years have witnessed big advances in the nanostructure thermoelectric bulk materials in both synthesis technique and fundamental understanding. In this book chapter, various strategies towards novel nanostructured bulk material with improved ZT value were summarized according to different synthesis routes, including reduced grain size by physical, or chemical powder metallurgy method, surface or interface modification by introduce second phase, and forming precipitations by molten casting method. We also theoretically explained the importance of the interface/boundary scattering to phonon and electron within the various thermoelectric materials. We finally proposed a new nanocomposite with ordered nanostructure, named as “ordered nanocomposite”, which is expected to achieve new breakthrough if we could create some sort of channels for the easy transport of electrons but difficult for the phonons.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by “Solid State Solar-Thermal Energy Conversion Center (S\(^{3}\)TEC)”, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Science under award number DE-SC0001299/DE-FG02-09ER46577 (GC and ZFR).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and TcSUH, University of Houston, 4800 Calhoun Rd, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Weishu Liu & Zhifeng Ren

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Gang Chen

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  1. Weishu Liu
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  2. Zhifeng Ren
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  3. Gang Chen
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Correspondence to Weishu Liu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Kunihito Koumoto

  2. National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Takao Mori

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Liu, W., Ren, Z., Chen, G. (2013). Nanostructured Thermoelectric Materials. In: Koumoto, K., Mori, T. (eds) Thermoelectric Nanomaterials. Springer Series in Materials Science, vol 182. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37537-8_11

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