In recent years, novel families of materials have been discovered and significant improvements in classical thermoelectric materials have been made. Thermoelectric generators are now being used to harvest industrial heat waste and convert it into electricity. This is being utilized in communal incinerators, large smelters, and cement plants. Leading car and truck companies are developing thermoelectric power generators to collect heat from the exhaust systems of gasoline and diesel engines. Additionally, thermoelectric coolers are being used in a variety of picnic boxes, vessels used to transport transplant organs, and in air-conditioned seats of mid-size cars. Consisting of twenty-one chapters written by top researchers in the field, this book explores the major advancements being made in the material aspects of thermoelectricity and provides a critical assessment in regards to the broadening of application opportunities for thermoelectric energy conversion.
Discovery and Design of New Thermoelectric Materials. Tetradymites:
Bi2Te3-Related Materials. Growth and Transport Properties of Tetradymite Thin
Films. All-Scale Hierarchical PbTe: From Nanostructuring to a Panoscopic
Material. Thermoelectric Properties of Magnesium SilicideBased Solid
Solutions and Higher Manganese Silicides. Clathrate-Based Thermoelectrics.
Advances in Nanostructured Half-Heusler Alloys for Thermoelectric
Applications. Thermoelectric Properties of Cu2X (X = S, Se, and Te).
BiCuSeO: A Promising Thermoelectric Material. Phase Diagram Study in n-CoSb3
Skutterudites. Chain-Forming A3MPn3 and A5M2Pn6 Zintl Phases. Thallium-Based
Chalcogenides as Thermoelectrics. Higher Manganese Silicides. Boron-Based
Materials. Complex Chalcogenides: Pseudo-Hollandites, Structures and
Properties. Tetrahedrites: Earth-Abundant Thermoelectric Materials with
Intrinsically Low Thermal Conductivity. Organic Thermoelectric Materials.
Inorganic/Organic Hybrid Superlattice Materials. Recent Progress in
Skutterudites. SHS-Processed Thermoelectric Materials. Prospective
Thermoelectrics among Topological Insulators.
Ctirad Uher is the C. Wilbur Peters Collegiate Professor in the Physics Department of the University of Michigan, where his research focuses on the field of condensed matter physics, including thermoelectric materials, superconductors, and diluted magnetic semiconductors. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of New South Wales. Uher was Associate Dean for two years at Michigan before serving as Chair of the Physics Department from 1994-2004, expanding the Department enormously during that time. Uher is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and was chosen in 2008 for the American Physical Society's Outstanding Referees Program for excellence in peer review. He holds an honorary degree from the University of Pardubice in the Czech Republic.
