Nanoscale Thermoelectric Materials: Thermal and Electrical Transport, and Applications to Solid-State Cooling and Power Generation: Volume 1543 Thermal and Electrical Transport, and Applications to Solid-state Cooling and Power Generation

At the Material Research Society Spring 2013 meeting, held in San Francisco April 1–5, 2013, three symposia were held that focused on thermal-to-electric energy conversion and thermal transport: Symposium H: Nanoscale Thermoelectrics - Materials and Transport Phenomena - II, Symposium I: Materials for Solid-State Refrigeration, and Symposium V: Nanoscale Heat Transport - From Fundamentals to Devices. Although each technical session was focused on a different aspect of this subject, the intellectual commensurability of these symposia warranted the publication of their proceedings in a single volume.

Part I. New Materials Approaches: 1. A new thermoelectric concept using large area PN junctions; 2. Thermoelectric transport in topological insulator Bi2Te2Se bulk crystals; 3. Large electrocaloric effect from electrical field induced orientational order-disorder transition in nematic liquid crystals possessing large dielectric anisotropy; Part II. Modeling/Theory: 4. First-principles investigations on the thermoelectric properties of Bi2Te3 doped with Se; 5. Giant thermoelectric effect in graded micro-nanoporous materials; 6. Computational modeling the electrocaloric effect for solid-state refrigeration; 7. Heat transport between heat reservoirs mediated by quantum systems; 8. Detailed theoretical investigation and comparison of the thermal conductivities of n- and p-type Bi2Te3 based alloys; Part III. Layered Structures: 9. Enhanced thermoelectric properties of Al-doped ZnO thin films; 10. Mapping thermal resistance around vacancy defects in graphite; 11. Thermal conductivity of regularly spaced amorphous/crystalline silicon superlattices: a molecular dynamics study; Part IV. Nanostructured Bulk and Composites: 12. Thermoelectric properties of Ru and In substituted misfit-layered Ca3Co4O9; 13. Enhanced thermoelectric figure-of-merit at room temperature in bulk Bi(Sb)Te(Se) with grain size of ~100nm; 14. Impact of rapid thermal annealing on thermoelectric properties of bulk nanostructured zinc oxide; 15. Fabrication and characterization of nanostructured bulk skutterudites; Part V. Nanowires, Nanotubes, and Nanocrystals: 16. A novel approach to synthesize lanthanum telluride thermoelectric thin films in ambient conditions; 17. Fabrication of thermally-conductive carbon nanotubes-copper oxide heterostructures; 18. Enhanced thermopower of GaN nanowires with transitional metal impurities; 19. Growth of polycrystalline indium phosphide nanowires on copper; 20. Quaternary chalcogenide nanocrystals: synthesis of Cu2ZnSnSe4 by solid state reaction and their thermoelectric properties; 21. Design and evaluation of carbon nanotube based nanofluids for heat transfer applications; Part VI. Nanoscale Transport Phenomena: 22. Solute effects on interfacial thermal conductance; 23. Heat transfer between a hot AFM tip and a cold sample: impact of the air pressure; 24. Thermal and rheological properties of micro- and nanofluids of copper in diethylene glycol – as heat exchange liquid; 25. Carrier mapping in thermoelectric materials.