E-MRS 2017 Spring Meeting

Simposium H: Inorganic thermoelectrics – linking material properties and systems engineering for XXI century applications

22th-26th May 2017

Information

With the increasing concern over environmental protection and the growing need for clean energy, thermoelectricity is being explored as an energy conversion technology that might be very useful in a number of applications. For instance, the thermoelectric technology can harvest waste industrial heat or provide active cooling of electronic devices. The development of efficient inorganic thermoelectric generators or coolers require to solve several key challenges related to the development of materials, module design and assembly.

Scope:

The Symposium is intended to highlight the most recent advances on materials, properties measurement, module fabrication, and device applications. Emphasis will be given to discuss the main aspects involved in the fabrication of thermoelectric devices, such as:

Improving the efficiency of inorganic thermoelectrics by novel design, synthesis methods, nanostructuration, processing, implementation, and study their performance.
Theoretical principles: such as the ability to tune densities of states through the design of molecular subunits or to tune electronic and thermal transport phenomena through interfacial effects at composite grain boundaries, etc.
Metrology: to highlight the importance of developing optimal thermoelectric metrology protocols and standards. Also, novel or improve measurement system.
Device and system fabrication: the challenges at system-level/components such as expansion coefficients, thermal interface materials, diffusion, heat exchangers, system form factors will be also covered. Manufacturing processes and total system cost components are evaluated to provide product development and commercial feasibility contexts. And,
novel ideas in the field for novel thermoelectric based devices.

Hot topics to be covered by the symposium:

Design, synthesis, nanostructuration effects, etc. in inorganic thermoelectrics;
Implementation and performance of thermoelectric materials;
Measurements and metrology as well as standardization;
Theoretical principles that lead to improving performance of the materials;
Device architectures for evaluation and application of these materials as thermoelectrics;
Upscaling approaches of material synthesis and device fabrication;
System engineering: Thermal interface materials, encapsulation, heat exchangers, etc …;
Applications for waste heat recovery and thermoelectric cooling.

Publication:

The manuscript of the symposium will be published in “Materials Today” proceedings journal.