Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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DF: Fachverband Dielektrische Festkörper

DF 14: Thermoelectric and Spincaloric Transport in Nanostructures

DF 14.1: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 09:30–10:00, H1

Transport in Old and New Thermoelectric Materials — •David Singh — Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA

Thermoelectric performance is a multiply contra-indicated property of matter. For example, it requires (1) high thermopower and high electrical conductivity, (2) high electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity and (3) low thermal conductivity and high melting point. The keys to progress are finding an optimal balance and finding ways of using complex electronic and phononic structures to avoid the counter-indications mentioned above. In this talk, I discuss some of the issues involved in the context of recent results. These include the surprising doping dependence of the thermopower in PbTe and PbSe, and the interplay between acoustic and optical phonons in PbTe. Certain new materials as well as new concepts based on low dimensional electronic structures are discussed.