Posted by Mike on November 21st, 2007 in heat, power generation

This snippet of an article published in the Applied Physics Letters may be the harbinger of something of huge importance. While graphene is a sheet of nanoparticles, and therefore not immediately relevant, the area of work (specifically in the thermoelectric arena) is one of great impact. If you think about all of the available direct energy conversion technologies: light to electricity (solar cells), chemical to heat, light to motion, light to chemical (photosynthesis), and even heat to information (look for my upcoming blog on photon-heat-computing), only the heat to electricity (i.e. thermoelectric) conversion seem to lag behind the others.

Most readers interested enough in technology to be reading this will already know about Peltier devices, which are direct electricity to cooling devices. While these electricity-to-cooling devices are fully developed and for sale, heat-to-electricity conversion devices are in their earliest stages. This article suggests that the Seebeck coefficient of 30 millivolt per degree Kelvin is one of the largest ever discovered. That may not seem like much, but it may be the first step in powering you car or you house from the waste heat from our everyday lives.

http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=A PPLAB000091000020203116000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes