Roadmap on thermoelectricity
Cristina Artini, Giovanni Pennelli, Patrizio Graziosi, Zhen Li, Neophytos Neophytou, Claudio Melis, Luciano Colombo, Eleonora Isotta, Ketan Lohani, Paolo Scardi, Alberto Castellero, Marcello Baricco, Mauro Palumbo, Silvia Casassa, Lorenzo Maschio, Marcella Pani, Giovanna Latronico, Paolo Mele, Francesca Di Benedetto, Gaetano Contento, M.F. De Riccardis, R. Fucci, Barbara Palazzo, A. Rizzo, Valeria Demontis, Domenic Prete, Muhammad Isram, Francesco Rossella, A. Ferrario, A. Miozzo, Stefano Boldrini, Elisabetta Dimaggio, Marcello Franzini, Simone Galliano, Claudia Barolo, Saeed Mardi, Andrea Reale, Bruno Lorenzi, Dario Narducci, Vanira Trifiletti, Silvia Milita, A. Bellucci, D.M. Trucchi
Abstract
The increasing energy demand and the ever more pressing need for clean technologies of energy conversion pose one of the most urgent and complicated issues of our age. Thermoelectricity, namely the direct conversion of waste heat into electricity, is a promising technique based on a long-standing physical phenomenon, which still has not fully developed its potential, mainly due to the low efficiency of the process. In order to improve the thermoelectric performance, a huge effort is being made by physicists, materials scientists and engineers, with the primary aims of better understanding the fundamental issues ruling the improvement of the thermoelectric figure of merit, and finally building the most efficient thermoelectric devices. In this Roadmap an overview is given about the most recent experimental and computational results obtained within the Italian research community on the optimization of composition and morphology of some thermoelectric materials, as well as on the design of thermoelectric and hybrid thermoelectric/photovoltaic devices.