Bottom-up engineering of thermoelectric nanomaterials and devices from solution-processed nanoparticle building blocks
- Autores: Silvia Ortega Torres
- Directores de la Tesis: Andreu Cabot Codina (dir. tes.), María Ibáñez Sabaté (dir. tes.), Blas Garrido Fernández (tut. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat de Barcelona ( España ) en 2017
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Lino Montoro Moreno (presid.), Albert Figuerola Silvestre (secret.), Dieter Platzek (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Física
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
In the world around us, it is easy to think in different situations in which there are temperature gradients available. These could be converted into a great source of energy if using the proper technology. Thermoelectric devices are environmentally friendly solid-state harvesters able to play this role by converting temperature differences into an electric voltage and vice-versa. These devices, besides being highly reliable since they have no moving parts, if engineered and fabricated in a shape-adaptable manner, are able to fit in countless industrial or domestic applications to improve their efficiency or power low-consumption devices like sensors. If, on top of it, the whole fabrication process is cost-effective and easily scalable, the outcoming thermoelectric devices could potentially reach numerous markets banned to date due to a mix of low efficiencies and high prices of the currently existing solutions.
The first milestone towards cost-effective thermoelectric devices relies on the improvement of the thermoelectric conversion efficiency of the constituents materials. However, such improvement cannot be at all costs. New materials with significant improved performance need to be designed and engineered with relatively low production cost. In this framework, solution-processed techniques are an outstanding alternative for the production of thermoelectric materials and devices. In particular, the bottom-up assembly of colloidal nanoparticles, with controlled size, shape, crystal phase and composition, has no competing technology to precisely design functional metamaterials without the need of a high capital equipment or complex procedures, not only for thermoelectrics, but also for a wide range of applications. Nevertheless, some limitations still need to be overcome to exploit the full potential of solution-processed assembly technologies, and two different challenges should be addressed. The first one is regarding materials efficiency enhancement, and the second one to the device development itself. In this work, we undertake a journey from the material development to the engineering of the final device.
