Optimizing Energy Efficiency with Solid State Thermoelectric Devices
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LY13235 - Conservation laws are certainly one of the most elementary and fundamental principles of mechanics. The surprise is that they may play a basic role to solve one of the main problems of future society. Providing a sustainable supply of energy to the world’s population will become a major societal problem for the 21st
century. Thermoelectric phenomena provide a method for heating and
cooling, with no moving parts, possible miniaturization and absence of
emission. They
could play a crucial role in a global sustainable energy solution but
the main problem is that in spite of 60 years of research, the
efficiency of thermoelectric devices is too low. A breakthrough - allowing increase of efficiency- would have a substantial economic and environmental relevance. In this letter we show that total momentum conservation property allows thermoelectric efficiency to reach the ideal Carnot limit.
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LY13235 - Conservation laws are certainly one of the most elementary and fundamental principles of mechanics. The surprise is that they may play a basic role to solve one of the main problems of future society. Providing a sustainable supply of energy to the world’s population will become a major societal problem for the 21st
century. Thermoelectric phenomena provide a method for heating and
cooling, with no moving parts, possible miniaturization and absence of
emission. They
could play a crucial role in a global sustainable energy solution but
the main problem is that in spite of 60 years of research, the
efficiency of thermoelectric devices is too low. A breakthrough - allowing increase of efficiency- would have a substantial economic and environmental relevance. In this letter we show that total momentum conservation property allows thermoelectric efficiency to reach the ideal Carnot limit.