Advances in Thermoelectricity: Foundational Issues, Materials and Nanotechnology

D. Narducci, G.J. Snyder, C. Fanciulli, Dario Narducci, G. Jeffrey Snyder, Carlo Fanciulli

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781643681726
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781643681733
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Physics
• Index: Physics

The field of thermoelectricity has continued to develop rapidly in recent years and remains one of the most exciting areas of research for a materials physicist. The need for sustainable energy has added a technological momentum to the challenge of devising materials with exceptional properties such as low thermal conductivity, high electrical conductivity and a large Seebeck coefficient, and has triggered a global, interdisciplinary effort. More recently, research on thermoelectric materials has promoted and motivated a major research endeavor to clarify the factors affecting thermal conductivity in nanostructures as part of a more general effort to apply nanotechnology to enhance the performance of thermoelectric materials for use in thermoelectric generators and coolers. This book contains the lectures presented as Course 207 of the International School of Physics Enrico Fermi, Advances in Thermoelectricity: Foundational Issues, Materials, and Nanotechnology, held in Varenna, Italy from 15 – 20 July 2019. This comprehensive course aimed to provide students with a modern vision of the physics of thermoelectric phenomena, starting from the thermodynamics of thermoelectricity and from the physics of transport processes and demonstrating how material structure and nanostructure, together with defects, have been used to tailor the physical properties of advanced thermoelectrics. Special attention was also given to areas of current research – from spin-caloritronics to charge transport in polymers – and to a selected number of applications for heat recovery. Encompassing the full complexity of modern thermoelectricity and covering the most cogent themes relevant to current research, the book will be of interest to all those working in the field.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• D. Narducci, G. J. Snyder and C. Fanciulli - Preface
• Course group shot
• D. Narducci - Thermodynamics and thermoelectricity
• Stephen Dongmin Kang and G. Jeffrey Snyder - Transport property analysis method for thermoelectric materials: Material quality factor and the effective mass model
• P. Torres and R. Rurali - A primer on phonon transport
• Marisol Martin-Gonzalez - Past and present of metal chalcogenides, oxides, Heusler compounds and Zintl phases as thermoelectrics: A brief summary
• Carlo Fanciulli - Thermoelectric harvesting: Basics on design optimization and applications
• K. Koumoto - Low-dimensional inorganic/organic hybrid thermoelectrics
• Carmine Antonio Perroni and Giuliano Benenti - Theoretical approaches for nanoscale thermoelectric phenomena
• Neophytos Neophytou - Electronic transport simulations in complex band structure thermoelectric materials
• B. Lorenzi - Heat conversion in solar thermoelectric harvesters
• B. Lorenzi - Heat conversion in hybrid solar thermoelectric harvesters
• Joseph P. Heremans - Thermal spin transport and spin in thermoelectrics
• List of participants