Advanced Thermoelectric Materials

Advanced Thermoelectric Materials addresses the fundamental issues, the latest research & developments, and the future of thermoelectric materials.

Thermoelectric materials offer a simple and environmentally-friendly solution to solve the global energy crisis and become very popular in the field of renewable energy conversion technologies. A thermoelectric device has the ability to convert the heat coming from the sun to electricity, not only for industrial sectors and automobiles, but for the human body as well. The performance of thermoelectric devices depends mostly on the type of materials used and their properties such as electrical conductivity, thermal stability, thermal conductivity, and the Seebeck coefficient. For a single material, full control of these parameters is very challenging. The existing thermoelectric materials display only 5--20% conversion efficiency. However, various strategies like nanostructuring, alloying and doping, are being applied to further enhance the efficiency of materials.

Among the topics discussed in this groundbreaking book include:

• Advanced thin film photo-thermal materials and applications
• Self-assembled nanostructured bulk Si as high-performance TE materials
• Thermoelectric Seebeck effect of disordered organic semiconductors
• Innovative approaches towards the synthesis of thermoelectric oxides Silicide thermoelectrics
• Advances on Mg2XIV-based thermoelectric materials
• Low-dimensional nanomaterials for thermoelectric detection of infrared and terahertz photons
• Percolation effects in semiconductor IV-VI - based solid solutions and thermoelectric materials
• Thermoelectric properties of granular carbon materials
• Thermoelectric properties and thermal stability of conducting polymer nanocomposites

Audience

Materials science and physics researchers and technologists both in academia and industry working on advanced thermoelectric materials; industrial sectors such as energy and the environment, fabricating and employing state-of-the-art techniques in various applications.