Environmental and economy concerns have significantly spurred the search for novel, high-performance thermoelectric materials for energy conversion in small-scale power generation and refrigeration devices. This quest has been mainly fueled by the introduction of new designs and the synthesis of new materials. In fact, good thermoelectric materials must simultaneously exhibit extreme properties: They must have very low thermal conductivity values and high electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient values. Since these transport coefficients are interrelated, the required task of optimization is a formidable one. Thus, thermoelectric materials provide a full-fledged example of interdisciplinary research connecting fields such as solid-state physics, materials science engineering, and structural chemistry and raise the need of gaining a proper knowledge of the role played by the electronic structure in the thermal and electrical transport properties of solid matter.
This book presents a detailed, up-to-date introduction to the field of thermoelectric materials in a tutorial way, focusing on both basic notions and fundamental questions and illustrating the abstract concepts with suitable application examples. First, it presents the thermoelectric effects, the transport coefficients and their mutual relations, the efficiency of thermoelectric devices, and some notions related to the characterization and related industry standards. Then it reviews the two basic strategies for optimizing the thermoelectric performance of materials: (i) the control of the thermal conductivity and (ii) the power factor enhancement. The text introduces various kinds of bulk materials of growing chemical and structural complexity and describes the role played by the electronic structure in the thermoelectric performance of the different materials. It also considers novel materials based on organic semiconductors and conducting polymers and also recent advances in thermoelectric phenomena at the nanoscale, focuses on the transport properties through molecular junctions, and analyzes the potential of DNA-based thermoelectric devices.
About the Editor:
Enrique Maciá is professor of condensed matter physics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. His research interests include the thermoelectric properties of quasicrystals and DNA-based devices. Dr. Maciá is author of several monographs and the book Aperiodic Structures in Condensed Matter: Fundamentals and Applications.
Key Features:
- Provides an updated and detailed introduction to the interdisciplinary field of thermoelectric materials in a tutorial style, focusing on both basic notions and fundamental questions and illustrating the abstract concepts with suitable application examples.
- Can be used as reader-friendly textbook for graduate students, senior scientists and researchers coming from diverse related fields of physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering.
- Teacher friendly; includes exercises and their solutions, based on recently published works, which can be used as control tests.
- Presents a complete, deep-insight, updated compendium of current state of the art and gives prospective suggestions for future next-generation high-performance thermoelectric materials.
- Contains 58 exercises and their detailed solutions, mainly inspired by results published in research papers during the past decade, offering a glimpse into the main trends in the field and illustrating the different concepts.
