Temperature Rises for Devices That Turn Heat Into Electricity

摘要

Long-sought materials that can harness waste heat and revolutionize refrigeration are on track to become more than an engineer's dream Imagine throwing away 65% of every paycheck. Not an inviting prospect. But that's essentially what happens every time we turn on our cars, lights, and many other modern conveniences. Roughly two-thirds of the energy that is fed into these gizmos radiates away as heat without doing any useful work. In the United States alone, that's a whopping 265 dollar billion a yearworth of power that, "poof," is just gone. But, thanks to a decade of steady progress in a once sleepy field of semiconductor engineering, that may soon change. Researchers around the globe are working to improve "thermoelectric" materials that convertwaste heat to usable electricity. Such chips aren't proficient enough yet to be an economical power source. But after decades of stagnation, "this field is moving very fast right now," says thermoelectric pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus of the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology (MIT).