Electricity generating nano-wizards
Monday, May 18, 2015 - 09:30
in Physics & Chemistry
Quantum dots are an ideal nanolab to study the means to turning heat into electricity. Just as alchemists always dreamed of turning common metal into gold, their 19th century physicist counterparts dreamed of efficiently turning heat into electricity, a field called thermoelectrics. Such scientists had long known that in conducting materials the flow of energy in the form of heat is accompanied by a flow of electrons. What they did not know at the time is that it takes nanometric-scale systems for the flow of charge and heat to reach a level of efficiency that cannot be achieved with larger scale systems.