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Practical Realization Of Zt>1 From The Materials Perspective, S. Joseph Poon

2015 Workshop on Infrared Radiation, Thermoelectricity and Chaos

For several decades, thermoelectric materials have seen limited use in energy conversion due to their low dimensionless figure-of-merit ZT, which determines the efficiency of thermoelectric devices. Driven by the demand for renewable energy, thermoelectric R&D is actively pursued by physicists, chemists, and engineers. In recent years, some new approaches for controlling the electron and phonon spectra as well as transports have been developed. Today, significant improvements in ZT have been reported. Nanostructuring approach has been shown to be effective in reducing the thermal conductivity, and in some cases, increasing the power factor. Current experiment and theory indicate that there are …

The Nighttime Solar Cell(R) Infrared Energy To Deep Space, Ronald Parise

2015 Workshop on Infrared Radiation, Thermoelectricity and Chaos

The natural transmission of approximately one-third of the heat that leaves the earth’s surface as infrared (IR) energy will exit the atmosphere and go into deep space. The Nighttime Solar Cell(R) (NSC) is designed to exploit this transmission of IR energy by using a thermoelectric generator (TEG) that operates in the temperature difference between the earth’s surface air temperature (nominally at 285 K)as the thermal source and deep space as the thermal sink (effective temperature of 3.5 K). The cold junction plate of the TEG is isolated from the surroundings by a vacuum and thus is in thermal communication primarily …

Powering Systems From Ambient Energy Sources, Rajeevan Amirtharajah

2015 Workshop on Infrared Radiation, Thermoelectricity and Chaos

Ambient intelligence and the Internet of Things will require flexible and energy efficient hardware platforms to implement the long-term deployed wireless devices that form the physical substrate for these emerging cyberphysical systems. Energy harvesting from environmental sources such as light and mechanical vibration can extend battery life for devices as long as efficient power management circuits are available. Self-timed circuits, power-on resets, integrated switched-capacitor DC/DC converters and adaptively-biased linear regulators are complementary circuit techniques that can reduce cost and power consumption for microwatt energy harvesting and energy scalable systems. Low power and low voltage analog and digital circuits for sampling, …

Infrared Power Generation: Fundamental Understanding, Applications, And Benefits, Giovanna Scarel

2015 Workshop on Infrared Radiation, Thermoelectricity and Chaos

The interaction between infrared radiation and a power generator device can be used to produce voltage and current. This phenomenon is called infrared power generation. It is shown that the infrared radiation transfers both thermal and electric energy to the power generator device. The coexistence of a thermal and an electrical component signifies that the temperature difference between the faces of the power generator devices is not a limiting factor to the amount of power that can be produced. Indeed, many avenues can be explored to increase the power for infrared energy harvesting purposes for military and civil applications. The …

Seebeck Nanoantennas For Solar Energy Harvesting, Francisco Javier Gonzalez

2015 Workshop on Infrared Radiation, Thermoelectricity and Chaos

In this talk a new type of devices based on thermoelectric optical antennas is presented and its applications in light sensing and energy harvesting applications is discussed. Numerical simulations will be presented showing that these type of antennas, also called Seebeck antennas, can generate low-power dc signals by using the thermoelectric properties of the metals used in their fabrication. Some theoretical values of the optical-to-electrical conversion efficiency is also presented in order to use them as solar and infrared energy harvesters.

Conservation Laws, Symmetry Breaking And Control Of The Heat Current, Guilio Casati

2015 Workshop on Infrared Radiation, Thermoelectricity and Chaos

Conservation Laws, Symmetry Breaking and Control of the Heat Current

Dr. Giulio Casati

Insubria University, Center for Nonlinear and Complex Systems, Department of Physics and Mathematics

The understanding of the underlying dynamical mechanisms which determines the macroscopic laws of heat conduction is a long standing task of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. A better understanding of such mechanism may also lead to potentially interesting applications based on the possibility to control the heat flow. Indeed, a model of thermal rectifier has been recently proposed in which heat can flow preferentially in one direction. The proposed rectifying mechanism is of very general nature …