Scientific report on the “Advanced thermoelectrics at nanoscale: from materials to devices” workshop.
Paris, France
July 7th – July 10th 2015

View the full report here.

Thermoelectric nanomaterials, whose combination of thermal, electrical, and semiconducting properties allows them to convert heat into electricity, are expected to play an increasingly important role in meeting the energy challenge of the future. Major advances in this field strongly depend on our fundamental understanding of heat and charge carrier transport and on the ability of finding new strategies to design and fabricate high efficiency thermoelectric devices and circuits. Despite of the substantial advances in the description of thermal and electronic dynamics in bulk materials, the extension of transport bulk theory to nanostructures, is still under development. One of the main problems in modeling the nanostructures for thermoelectrics is the fact that they usually have complex compositions and structures. To these complex structures, usually, several external elements are added to improve either the thermoelectric properties and to become functional elements of devices and circuits. The final material is hence a quite complex object whose phononic and electronic structure is unknown. Continue reading Advanced thermoelectrics at nanoscale: from materials to devices →