2014/06/07 by Shuang Tang, M. S. Dresselhaus, Tang, Shuang +2 · 4 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Advanced Thermoelectric Materials and Devices #Computer science #Electrical engineering #Electricity #Energy transformation #Engineering #Engineering physics #FOS: Physical sciences #Figure of merit #Green IT and Sustainability #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mechanical engineering #Physics #Refrigeration #Thermoelectric effect #Thermoelectric generator #Thermoelectric materials #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1406.1842
published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University)
arxiv created 2014/06/07 · openalex publication_date 2014/06/07 · arxiv updated 2014/06/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Thermoelectrics involves both the generation of electrical power from heat flow, and the efficient refrigeration using electricity, which has been intensively focused on for two decades. The performance of thermoelectric power generation and refrigeration has been improved by many proposals since 1993, which is, however, the currently not yet in an industrially competitive level. The development of the entire filed has come to a puzzling point, where the physical reason of why this energy conversion efficiency enhancing problem is barely soluble, and the physical answer of how it should be re-formed to be soluble are the most urgent questions in this field. We here answer these questions and provide the guidance on how to design the of thermoelectric figure of merit enhancement in various systems using different approaches for future researches. We start from criticizing the current way of expression the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT and then introduce the new concept of pseudo-ZT, which can finally make it clear what variables really decides ZT, and clarify the historical misunderstanding of many thermoelectric performance enhancing proposals. Then we explore the most important question on what variables really enhance ZT, and give the contemporary researchers a new guidance on what is the correct direction of thermoelectric performance improving for various systems.