{"id":214831,"date":"2025-05-27T01:13:27","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T06:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/smart-phonon-control-boosts-efficiency-in-eco-friendly-thermoelectric-material"},"modified":"2025-05-27T01:13:27","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T06:13:27","slug":"smart-phonon-control-boosts-efficiency-in-eco-friendly-thermoelectric-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/smart-phonon-control-boosts-efficiency-in-eco-friendly-thermoelectric-material","title":{"rendered":"Smart phonon control boosts efficiency in eco-friendly thermoelectric material"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/smart-phonon-control-boosts-efficiency-in-eco-friendly-thermoelectric-material2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A research team has discovered how to make a promising energy-harvesting material much more efficient\u2014without relying on rare or expensive elements. The material, called \u03b2-Zn<sub>4<\/sub>Sb<sub>3<\/sub>, is a tellurium-free thermoelectric compound that can convert waste heat into electricity.<\/p>\n<p>In their study <a href=\"https:\/\/advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/advs.202411498\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Advanced Science<\/i>, scientists used advanced neutron scattering techniques to peek inside the crystal and found something surprising: tiny heat vibrations (called phonons) were being disrupted by \u201crattling\u201d atoms inside the structure. This phenomenon, known as <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/phonon\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">phonon<\/a> avoided crossing, dramatically slowed down how heat travels through the material.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to this effect, the material\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/thermal+conductivity\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">thermal conductivity<\/a> dropped to extremely low levels\u2014great news for <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/thermoelectric+performance\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">thermoelectric performance<\/a>. Even better, the researchers found that the single-crystal version of this material also conducts electricity better than its polycrystalline counterpart, reaching a high power conversion efficiency of 1.4%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A research team has discovered how to make a promising energy-harvesting material much more efficient\u2014without relying on rare or expensive elements. The material, called \u03b2-Zn4Sb3, is a tellurium-free thermoelectric compound that can convert waste heat into electricity. In their study published in Advanced Science, scientists used advanced neutron scattering techniques to peek inside the crystal [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1635,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214831","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}