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Thermoelectrics: Carbon nanotubes get high

Nature Energy volume 1, Article number: 16037 (2016) Cite this article

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Waste heat can be converted to electricity by thermoelectric generators, but their development is hindered by the lack of cheap materials with good thermoelectric properties. Now, carbon-nanotube-based materials are shown to have improved properties when purified to contain only semiconducting species and then doped.

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Figure 1: Simplified sketch of a carbon nanotube-based thermoelectric generator.
Figure 2: Historical development of the thermoelectric power factor for various classes of emerging thermoelectric materials.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Xavier Crispin is in the Department of Science and Technology, Linköping University, 61074 Norrköping, Sweden.,

    Xavier Crispin

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  1. Xavier Crispin
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Correspondence to Xavier Crispin.

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Crispin, X. Thermoelectrics: Carbon nanotubes get high. Nat Energy 1, 16037 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2016.37

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