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 MRS Proceedings Series

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.