{"id":117159,"date":"2020-12-15T17:22:45","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T01:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/a-cool-advance-in-thermoelectric-conversion"},"modified":"2020-12-15T17:22:45","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T01:22:45","slug":"a-cool-advance-in-thermoelectric-conversion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/a-cool-advance-in-thermoelectric-conversion","title":{"rendered":"A cool advance in thermoelectric conversion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-cool-advance-in-thermoelectric-conversion.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>More than two-thirds of the energy used worldwide is ultimately ejected as \u201cwaste heat.\u201d Within that reservoir of discarded energy lies a great and largely untapped opportunity, claim scientists in MIT\u2019s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE). As reported in a recent issue of <i>Nature Communications<\/i>, the MIT team\u2014led by Assistant Professor Mingda Li, who heads NSE\u2019s Quantum Matter Group\u2014has achieved a breakthrough in thermoelectric generation, which offers a direct means of converting thermal energy, including waste heat, into electricity.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/temperature+gradient\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">temperature gradient<\/a>, or difference, within a material such as a metal or semiconductor can, through a phenomenon known as the Seebeck effect, give rise to an <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/electrical+voltage\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">electrical voltage<\/a> that drives a current. \u201cFor many materials, the <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/thermoelectric+effect\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">thermoelectric effect<\/a> is too low to be useful,\u201d explains NSE Research Scientist Fei Han. \u201cOur goal is to find materials with conversion efficiencies high enough to make thermoelectric generation more practical.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The efficiency of thermoelectric energy conversion is proportional to a material\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/temperature\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">temperature<\/a>, electrical <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/conductivity\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">conductivity<\/a>, and something called the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/thermopower\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">thermopower<\/a>\u201d squared; it is inversely proportional to the <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/thermal+conductivity\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">thermal conductivity<\/a>. Because efficiency goes up with temperature, most thermoelectric materials used today operate in the range of hundreds of degrees centigrade. \u201cBut in our lives, most of the stuff around us is at room temperature,\u201d Han says. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re trying to discover new materials that work effectively at or below room temperature.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than two-thirds of the energy used worldwide is ultimately ejected as \u201cwaste heat.\u201d Within that reservoir of discarded energy lies a great and largely untapped opportunity, claim scientists in MIT\u2019s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE). As reported in a recent issue of Nature Communications, the MIT team\u2014led by Assistant Professor Mingda Li, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,873,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-nuclear-energy","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}