Berlin 2018 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 38: Nanomaterials

MM 38.3: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 14. März 2018, 15:45–16:00, H 0106

Nanoscale engineering for thermoelectrics: an ab initio study — •Phil Hasnip¹, Matt Probert¹, and Mahmoud Hussein² — ¹University of York, UK — ²University of Colorado-Boulder, USA

Thermoelectric materials have the potential to dramatically improve the energy efficiency of many devices by converting waste heat into electricity. An ideal thermoelectric material has high electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity, requirements which are often in conflict. When the thermal conduction is mediated by phonons, some improvements can be made by introducing point scatters and other defects to reduce the thermal conductivity; however these same defects often scatter electrons too, causing a simultaneous decrease in the electrical conductivity. In this work we use ab initio simulations to show that the thermal conductivity can instead be reduced by introducing phononic resonators on the surface of a material, scattering heat-carrying phonons whilst leaving the electronic properties almost unchanged.