Search results for " Merit"
showing 10 items of 91 documents
Tailoring of the electrical and thermal properties using ultra-short period non-symmetric superlattices
2016
Thermoelectric modules based on half-Heusler compounds offer a cheap and clean way to create eco-friendly electrical energy from waste heat. Here we study the impact of the period composition on the electrical and thermal properties in non-symmetric superlattices, where the ratio of components varies according to (TiNiSn)���:(HfNiSn)���������, and 0 ��� n ��� 6 unit cells. The thermal conductivity (��) showed a strong dependence on the material content achieving a minimum value for n = 3, whereas the highest value of the figure of merit ZT was achieved for n = 4. The measured �� can be well modeled using non-symmetric strain relaxation applied to the model of the series of thermal resistanc…
Optimization of the carrier concentration in phase-separated half-Heusler compounds
2014
Inspired by the promising thermoelectric properties of phase-separated half-Heusler materials, we investigated the influence of electron doping in the n-type Ti_(0.3−x)Zr_(0.35)Hf_(0.35)NiSn compound. The addition of Nb to this compound led to a significant increase in its electrical conductivity, and shifted the maximum Seebeck coefficient to higher temperatures owing to the suppression of intrinsic carriers. This resulted in an enhancement of both the power factor α^2σ and figure of merit, zT. The applicability of an average effective mass model revealed the optimized electron properties for samples containing Nb. There is evidence in the literature that the average effective mass model i…
Novel plasmonic sensor design using plasmon-induced transparency
2010
We introduce a novel sensor concept in the field of plasmonics, namely plasmon-induced transparency sensors. These sensors combine localized particle plasmon resonances with extremely small sensing volume with excellent sharp spectral resonances that show a good respose to refractive index changes of the surrounding environment. The principle is based on the plasmonic analog of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) between a radiative dipole and a nonradiative quadrupole antenna. This effect yields a spectrally narrow resonance within a broad localized particle plasmon resonance in the near-infrared spectral region [1, 2]. Using deposition of biotin and streptavidin, we demonstrate…
Charge carrier concentration optimization of thermoelectric p-type half-Heusler compounds
2015
The carrier concentration in the p-type half-Heusler compound Ti0.3Zr0.35Hf0.35CoSb1−xSnx was optimized, which is a fundamental approach to enhance the performance of thermoelectric materials. The optimum carrier concentration is reached with a substitution level x = 0.15 of Sn, which yields the maximum power factor, 2.69 × 10−3 W m−1 K−2, and the maximum ZT = 0.8. This is an enhancement of about 40% in the power factor and the figure of merit compared to samples with x = 0.2. To achieve low thermal conductivities in half-Heusler compounds, intrinsic phase separation is an important key point. The present work addresses the influence of different preparation procedures on the quality and re…
Engineering the crack path in lattice cellular materials through bio-inspired micro-structural alterations
2019
Abstract A computational study on the fracture behaviour of bio-inspired finite-size lattice configurations is performed in this work. The study draws inspiration from recent investigations aimed at increasing the fracture energy of some materials through small modifications of their microstructure. The main question here is whether it is possible, to some extent, to engineer the crack path in metallic cellular materials through such small micro-structural modifications and how to quantify the effect of alternative strategies. Nature provides several examples of strategies used to delay or arrest damage and crack propagation. One striking example is given by the micro-architecture of severa…
Thermoelectric properties of p-type Bi2Sr2Co2O9 glass-ceramics
2014
In the oxide system of Bi–Sr–Co glass melts have been prepared by adding a small amount of glass formers. A crystallization leads to crystalline phases of Bi8Sr8Co4O25, BiSrCo2Ox and Bi2Sr2Co2O9 (BC-222) densely embedded into a residual glass phase. This work shows the possibility of obtaining microstructured bulk material with low thermal conductivity and relatively high electrical conductivity via such a glass ceramic approach. Furthermore the stability of these materials under thermal cycling for temperatures up to 700 °C is shown. A characterization of the thermoelectric properties leads to a figure of merit (ZT) between 0.008 and 0.018.
Review on Polymers for Thermoelectric Applications.
2014
In this review, we report the state-of-the-art of polymers in thermoelectricity. Classically, a number of inorganic compounds have been considered as the best thermoelectric materials. Since the prediction of the improvement of the figure of merit by means of electronic confinement in 1993, it has been improved by a factor of 3-4. In the mean time, organic materials, in particular intrinsically conducting polymers, had been considered as competitors of classical thermoelectrics, since their figure of merit has been improved several orders of magnitude in the last few years. We review here the evolution of the figure of merit or the power factor during the last years, and the best candidates…
Graphene Cardboard: from Ripples to Tunable Metamaterial
2014
Recently graphene was introduced with tunable ripple texturing, a nanofabric enabled by graphene's remarkable elastic properties. However, one can further envision sandwiching the ripples, thus constructing composite nanomaterial, graphene cardboard. Here the basic mechanical properties of such structures are investigated computationally. It turns out that graphene cardboard is highly tunable material, for its elastic figures of merit vary orders of magnitude, with Poisson ratio tunable from 10 to -0.5 as one example. These trends set a foundation to guide the design and usage of metamaterials made of rippled van der Waals solids.
Flashlamp-pumped Ti:Sapphire laser: Influence of the rod figure of merit and Ti3+ concentration
1994
A flashlamp-pumped Ti:Sapphire laser is tested with rods of various Figures of Merit (FOM from 100 to 800) and Ti3+ concentrations (0.1 and 0.15% by weight) and we measured the laser energy dependence as a function of these parameters. Output energies above 2 J are obtained without dye converter, leading to a 1.8% overall efficiency and a 2.2% slope efficiency. The effects of pump pulse duration by variation of the discharge capacitance are also monitored.
A review of the development of portable laser induced breakdown spectroscopy and its applications
2014
Abstract In this review, we present person-transportable laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) devices that have previously been developed and reported in the literature as well as their applications. They are compared with X-ray fluorescent (XRF) devices, which represent their strongest competition. Although LIBS devices have advantages over XRF devices, such as sensitivity to the light elements, high spatial resolution and the possibility to distinguish between different layers of the sample, there are also disadvantages and both are discussed here. Furthermore, the essential portable LIBS instrumentation (laser, spectrograph and detector) is presented, and published results related…