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(0130) Center for Organic Photonics & Electronics

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We would like to invite you to the Center for Organic Photonics & Electronics (COPE) Seminar on Monday, January 30, 2006. The seminar will be held at the MANUFACTURING RELATED DISCIPLINE COMPLEX (MRDC), RM. 4211 from 11:00 AM to 12:00PM.

Refreshments will be served.

Speaker

PROF. ALEXIS ABRAMSON
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Case Western Reserve University

Novel Approaches for Designing High Performance Thermoelectric Materials

Thermoelectric devices are attractive candidates for heat removal or energy production applications because they do not contain moving parts, are environmentally benign, and may be easily incorporated into small-scale technologies. The use of thermoelectric devices is not widespread today, but even marginal improvements in performance can have enormous impact on their future application. Moreover, it has been shown theoretically and, to a certain extent experimentally, that by reducing the characteristic length scale and/or dimensionality of a thermoelectric material, its thermoelectric performance may skyrocket. The work presented will specifically discuss two novel approaches to the development of thermoelectric materials. First, nanocomposite systems comprised of conducting polymers and Bi nanoparticles will be discussed. The high quality nearly mono-dispersed nanoparticles are synthesized via pyrolysis of reagents into a hot coordinating solvent. The nanocomposites are fabricated by combining an ultrasonicated solution of CSA-doped polyaniline in m-cresol with an ultrasonicated solution of bismuth nanoparticles in m-cresol, followed by spin coating or casting of the aggregate solution on a substrate to form nanocomposite films. Thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient measurements of initial composites will be reported. Additionally, the development of a novel characterization tool to investigate properties of individual nanostructures will also be discussed. The second approach to the development of novel thermoelectric materials comes from looking to nature for guidance. Some species of shark use thermoelectrics to sense temperature differentials in their surroundings by using electrosensing organs consisting of a nerve set at the end of a pore, which is filled with an extracellular gel comprised of sea water and a small percentage of glycoprotein. Our experimental work has shown that the shark gel exhibits an unusually high Seebeck coefficient, and we have provided a qualitative explanation as to why an enhanced Seebeck coefficient results. These experiments have helped guide ongoing research towards synthesizing artificial gels with exceptionally high Seebeck coefficients by carefully choosing appropriate electrolyte solutions combined with a high concentration of macromolecules comprised of densely packed charged groups. As a result, a new class of bio-inspired thermoelectric systems exhibiting superior Seebeck coefficients will be demonstrated.

Please contact Angie Hughes with any questions or concerns.

Status

  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Shirley Tomes
  • Created:01/05/2006
  • Modified By:Fletcher Moore
  • Modified:10/07/2016