Chemistry Weekly Seminar - Dr. Holger Kleinke

Title:

A Step Towards more Sustainable Energy Generation: Environmentally Friendly Thermoelectric Materials

Abstract:

Thermoelectric materials are capable to directly convert the nowadays abundant waste heat – otherwise lost – into electricity. To be suitable for industrial applications, the materials need to be relatively cheap, made from elements that are abundant in nature as well as non-toxic to meet environmental regulations. To date however, the commercial applications are almost exclusively based on materials containing toxic and scarce, thus expensive, tellurium.

I will demonstrate that the more affordable and environmentally benign magnesium silicide-stannides provide a viable alternative with equivalent energy conversion efficiency, when appropriately modified at the nanoscale. In addition to the outstanding thermoelectric property data from our laboratory experiments, we have been able to systematically improve on the synthesis process, making it both faster and cheaper. Finally, we have scaled up the fabrication from the typical 2 – 3 gram samples to the kg scale, enabling the required fast production of large amounts of these materials for industrial applications.