TY - GEN
T1 - Thermoelectric energy conversion using nanostructured materials
AU - Chen, Gang
AU - Kraemer, Daniel
AU - Muto, Andrew
AU - McEnaney, Kenneth
AU - Feng, Hsien-Ping
AU - Liu, Wei-Shu
AU - Zhang, Qian
AU - Yu, Bo
AU - Ren, Zhifeng
N1 - Publication details (e.g. title, author(s), publication statuses and dates) are captured on an “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” basis at the time of record harvesting from the data source. Suggestions for further amendments or supplementary information can be sent to [email protected].
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - High performance thermoelectric materials in a wide range of temperatures are essential to broaden the application spectrum of thermoelectric devices. This paper presents experiments on the power and efficiency characteristics of lowand mid-temperature thermoelectric materials. We show that as long as an appreciable temperature difference can be created over a short thermoelectric leg, good power output can be achieved. For a mid-temperature n-type doped skutterudite material an efficiency of over 11% at a temperature difference of 600°C could be achieved. Besides the improvement of thermoelectric materials, device optimization is a crucial factor for efficient heat-to-electric power conversion and one of the key challenges is how to create a large temperature across a thermoelectric generator especially in the case of a dilute incident heat flux. For the solar application of thermoelectrics we investigated the concept of large thermal heat flux concentration to optimize the operating temperature for highest solar thermoelectric generator efficiency. A solar-to-electric power conversion efficiency of ∼5% could be demonstrated. Solar thermoelectric generators with a large thermal concentration which minimizes the amount of thermoelectric nanostrucutured bulk material shows great potential to enable cost-effective electrical power generation from the sun. © 2011 Copyright Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).
AB - High performance thermoelectric materials in a wide range of temperatures are essential to broaden the application spectrum of thermoelectric devices. This paper presents experiments on the power and efficiency characteristics of lowand mid-temperature thermoelectric materials. We show that as long as an appreciable temperature difference can be created over a short thermoelectric leg, good power output can be achieved. For a mid-temperature n-type doped skutterudite material an efficiency of over 11% at a temperature difference of 600°C could be achieved. Besides the improvement of thermoelectric materials, device optimization is a crucial factor for efficient heat-to-electric power conversion and one of the key challenges is how to create a large temperature across a thermoelectric generator especially in the case of a dilute incident heat flux. For the solar application of thermoelectrics we investigated the concept of large thermal heat flux concentration to optimize the operating temperature for highest solar thermoelectric generator efficiency. A solar-to-electric power conversion efficiency of ∼5% could be demonstrated. Solar thermoelectric generators with a large thermal concentration which minimizes the amount of thermoelectric nanostrucutured bulk material shows great potential to enable cost-effective electrical power generation from the sun. © 2011 Copyright Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).
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U2 - 10.1117/12.885759
DO - 10.1117/12.885759
M3 - RGC 32 - Refereed conference paper (with host publication)
SN - 9780819486059
VL - 8031
T3 - Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
BT - Micro- and Nanotechnology Sensors, Systems, and Applications III
T2 - Micro- and Nanotechnology Sensors, Systems, and Applications III
Y2 - 25 April 2011 through 29 April 2011
ER -