Thermoelectrics: From history, a window to the future

Thermoelectricity offers a sustainable path to recover and convert waste heat into readily available electric energy, and has been studied for more than two centuries. From the controversy between Galvani and Volta on the Animal Electricity, dating back to the end of the XVIII century and anticipating Seebeck’s observations, the understanding of the physical mechanisms evolved along with the development of the technology. In the XIX century Ørsted clarified some of the earliest observations of the thermoelectric phenomenon and proposed the first thermoelectric pile, while it was only after the studies on thermodynamics by Thomson, and Rayleigh’s suggestion to exploit the Seebeck effect for …