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Thermoelectricity

The ugly duckling

Nature volume 508, pages 327–328 (2014)Cite this article

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Single crystals of tin selenide have been shown to display, along one crystallographic direction of their high-temperature state, the highest thermoelectric efficiency of any bulk material. See Letter p.373

More than 90% of the energy we use comes from thermal processes1, which produce the bulk of the electricity generated by power plants, as well as powering aeroplanes and most cars. Heat engines have existed since the early eighteenth century, drove the Industrial Revolution and gave rise to the science of thermodynamics. Thermoelectricity was discovered about a century later2 and is based on the same thermodynamic principles that heat engines depend on, except for the fact that thermoelectric power generators use electrons, rather than steam or air, as the working fluid. A testament to the importance of these fields is the fact that progress in the thermal sciences has been unrelenting: this includes work by Zhao et al.3 on page 373 of this issue.

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Figure 1: Working principle of a thermoelectric generator.

References

  1. www.iea.org

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  1. Joseph P. Heremans is in the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and of Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA.,

    Joseph P. Heremans

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Correspondence to Joseph P. Heremans.

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Heremans, J. The ugly duckling. Nature 508, 327–328 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/508327a

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