What are thermoelectric polymers?
Thermoelectric (TE) polymers are organic highly conducting polymers that can convert heat to electricity or electricity to heat.
What is thermoelectric transport?
Abstract. Thermoelectric energy converters can directly convert heat to electricity using semiconducting materials via the Seebeck effect and electricity to heat via the Peltier effect.
What is thermoelectric property?
Thermoelectric materials endow the free energy from waste heat for useful purposes. A typical thermoelectric material should have high electrical conductivity, low thermal conductivity and thus must maintain a temperature gradient.
Where is thermoelectricity used?
Thermoelectric generators could be used in power plants to convert waste heat into additional electrical power and in automobiles as automotive thermoelectric generators (ATGs) to increase fuel efficiency.
What is the cause of electric current in thermoelectricity?
Heating one end of a thermoelectric material causes the electrons to move away from the hot end toward the cold end. When the electrons go from the hot side to the cold side this causes an electrical current, which the PowerPot harnesses to charge USB devices.
What are thermoelectric materials used for?
3 ). Thermoelectric materials are used in thermoelectric systems for cooling or heating in niche applications, and are being studied as a way to regenerate electricity from waste heat. The usefulness of a material in thermoelectric systems is determined by the device efficiency.
What are the functional graded thermoelectric materials?
Functionally graded materials make it possible to improve the conversion efficiency of existing thermoelectrics. These materials have a non-uniform carrier concentration distribution and in some cases also solid solution composition.
Why is the matrix of a thermoelectric material generally nonconductive?
The matrix is generally nonconductive so as to not short current as well as to let the thermoelectric material dominate electrical transport properties.
What is the thermoelectric power factor of a material?
Often the thermoelectric power factor is reported for a thermoelectric material, given by where S is the Seebeck coefficient, and σ is the electrical conductivity .