Editor's Summary
10 January 2008
Silicon goes thermoelectric
Thermoelectric materials, capable of converting a thermal gradient to an electric field and vice versa, could be useful in power generation and refrigeration. But the fabrication of the available high-performance thermoelectric materials is not easily scaled up to the volumes needed for large-scale heat energy scavenging applications. Nanostructuring improves thermoelectric capabilities of some materials, but good thermoelectric materials tend not to take readily to nanostructuring. How about silicon? It can be processed on a large scale but has poor thermoelectric properties. Two groups now show that silicon's thermoelectric properties can be vastly improved by structuring it into arrays of nanowires and carefully controlling nanowire morphology and doping. So with more development, silicon may have potential as a thermoelectric material.
News and Views: Quantum mechanics: Evolution stopped in its tracks
How do you watch the evolution of something that doesn't evolve? In the classical world, even posing this question would provoke raised eyebrows. But where quantum physics is involved, no question is too silly.
Lev Vaidman
doi:10.1038/451137a
Letter: Enhanced thermoelectric performance of rough silicon nanowires
Allon I. Hochbaum, Renkun Chen, Raul Diaz Delgado, Wenjie Liang, Erik C. Garnett, Mark Najarian, Arun Majumdar & Peidong Yang
doi:10.1038/nature06381
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (0) | Supplementary information
Letter: Silicon nanowires as efficient thermoelectric materials
Akram I. Boukai, Yuri Bunimovich, Jamil Tahir-Kheli, Jen-Kan Yu, William A. Goddard III & James R. Heath
doi:10.1038/nature06458
First paragraph | Full Text | PDF (0) | Supplementary information
