ZTspam-20020127, MRS Report, Meeting Announcements

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- ZTspam for 20020127 (That's January 27, 2002).
+ A ZT Services Publication on Thermoelectricity
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by Cronin B. Vining,

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CONTENTS
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NEWS
+- Ireland (Northwestern), Lowhorn (Clemson), & Rabin (MIT) Win
Best Paper Awards at 2001 MRS Fall Meeting

+- Report from 2001 MRS Fall Meeting, held Boston, MA USA, Nov. 27-29, 2001
Overdue, but here at last.

+- ICT2001 Proceedings Have Shipped to Attendees & Pre-orders
To order a copy go to this IEEE website

If you attended ICT2001 and haven't received your copy,
you might try contacting

+- Body Heat-Powered TE Market Estimated at US$2.5 billion.
Would you believe US$30 Billion?

+- Galileo on Last Legs

ANNOUNCEMENTS

+- New Thermoelectric Materials Workshop,
Traverse City, MI USA, Aug.17-21, 2002
'Chemistry, Physics and Materials Science of Thermoelectric Materials
Beyond Bismuth Telluride'
Details
Contact
Register by July 1, 2002

+- ICT2002, Long Beach, California USA, August 25-29, 2002
Details
contact
Deadline for abstracts 1 May 2002
Send abstracts to
Deadline for full paper 25 August 2002

+- First Announcement
7th European Workshop on Thermoelectrics,
Pamplona, Spain, October 3-4th, 2002.
Details
or
contact
Deadline for abstracts July 14, 2002
Notice of acceptance and instruction for authors July 31,2002
Full paper due October 3, 2002 (until 10.00 h)

+- ICT2003 will be hosted in France

email
No further details available. When I know, I tell you!

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NEWS
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+- Ireland (Northwestern), Lowhorn (Clemson), & Rabin (MIT)
Best Paper Awards at 2001 MRS Fall Meeting

John Ireland of Northwestern University, Nathan Lowhorn of Clemson University and Oded Rabin of MIT each won Best Paper Awards in the Thermoelectric Symposium of the 2001 MRS Fall Meeting held in Boston, MA USA Nov. 27-29, 2001. Each winner received $350 and a copy of the recently published 'Principles of Thermoelectrics Basics and New Materials Development' (Springer Series in Materials Science, V. 45) by George Nolas, Jeff Sharp and H. Julian Goldsmid
2001. (Those of you who didn't win one can get a copy at ).

The three winning papers are available to MRS members online at the links listed below. Congratulations to each recipient for a job well done!

Title INITIAL ASSESSMENT OF THE THERMOELECTRIC PROPERTIES FOR THE MIXED SYSTEM Rb2-xKxBi8Se13. John R. Ireland, C.R. Kannewurf, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL; Theodora Kyratsi, Mercouri G. Kanatzidis, Dept. of Chemistry and Center for Fundamental Materials Research, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.

Available to MRS Members online at (have your MRS membership # handy)

Title ELECTRICAL AND THERMAL TRANSPORT OF RARE EARTH DOPED PENTATELLURIDES. Nathan D. Lowhorn, Terry M. Tritt, R.T. Littleton IV, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson Univ, Clemson, SC; J.W. Kolis, Dept. of Chemistry, Clemson Univ, Clemson, SC.

Available to MRS Members online at (have your MRS membership # handy)

Title THERMOELECTRIC NANOWIRES BY ELECTROCHEMICAL DEPOSITION. Oded Rabin^a, Yu-Ming Lin^b, Stephen B. Cronin^c, Mildred S. Dresselhaus^b,c, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA; ^aDept. of Chemistry; ^bDept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; ^cDept. of Physics, Cambridge, MA.

Available to MRS Members online at (have your MRS membership # handy)

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+- Report from 2001 MRS Fall Meeting, held Boston, MA USA, Nov. 27-29, 2001
Overdue, but here at last.

Abstracts from the 2001 MRS Fall Meeting are available to anyone online at

MRS Members (have your MRS Member # handy to log in) can read many of the papers from the 2001 MRS Fall Meeting at

The first MRS Symposia focused on thermoelectric properties of materials was held as part of the 1987 MRS Spring meeting. In recent years an MRS thermoelectric symposia has been held about every 18 months, alternating between the MRS Spring meetings held in San Francisco and the MRS Fall Meetings in Boston. Last fall, G.S. Nolas, D.C. Johnson, D.G. Mandrus organized the most recent incarnation of this series with 'Symposium G, Thermoelectric Materials 2001--Research and Applications' held as part of the MRS Fall Meeting in Boston, MA USA, Nov. 27-29, 2001.

Copies of the Proceedings (not yet available in print) can be ordered at

Symposium G had about 94 papers covering topics ranging from low dimensional materials like quantum wells, wires and dots, 'classic' bulk materials (Bi2Te3, PbTe, SiGe), novel new materials such as clathrates, and phenomena closely related to thermoelectricity like thermionics. Low dimensional systems (quantum wells, wires and dots) accounted for 18 papers, considerably more than any other single topic. Of the authors listed in the program, roughly 221 were from the US, 70 from Japan, 19 from Ukraine, 17 each from France and China with some 19 countries in all represented. I made no attempt to account for duplicates, so many names are counted multiple times. And I don't add well, so don't hold me to those numbers.

The opening session had 75-90 attendees, more than the 55-65 people who got up an hour earlier (like me) to listen another Symposium covering the latest high temperature superconductor (MgB2) results. Laptop computers seem to be rapidly replacing viewgraphs as the medium-of-choice for presentations, not only in the thermoelectric session but throughout the MRS Fall Meeting. The sight of 4 or 5 laptops stacked on the presenters table is still a bit amusing to me, but I must say people are getting quite good at making effective presentations with this new media. Viewgraphs still seem much more cost effective and reliable. But as we know, the medium is the message.

The range and quality of presentations was generally quite high, and I don't have space here to mention everything of note. Don't be offended if you (or your favorite topic) are left out. Some selected presentations which stand out a bit in my mind, in no particular order, include

Niel Dilley's (Quantum Design) presentation on a commercial thermoelectric property measurement system,

Commercial Apparatus for Measuring Thermal Transport Properties From 1.9 to 390 Kelvin
N.R. Dilley, R.C. Black, L. Montes, A. Wilson, and M.B. Simmonds
Available to MRS Members online at (have your MRS membership # handy)

is noteworthy because it indicates mainstream scientific equipment manufacturers are recognizing the thermoelectric community.

Mercouri Kanatzidis's group (Michigan State) gave several presentations on their Bi2Te3-derivatives, including an overview presentation by Mercouri which nicely encapsulated the rich chemistry and structural variations possible.

Clathrates, the relatively new class of 'cage' structures based on Si, Ge and Sn, were also well represented in about 9 papers by a number of authors, notably Nolas, Gryko, Stokes, Iverson and a paper on zone refined (!) clathrates presented by Bryan.

Of the many papers on low dimensional systems, I must mention the work from MIT including the papers from the Dresselhaus group on the main campus and Ted Harman from MIT's Lincoln Labs. Significant progress continues to be reported on the preparation, properties and theory of quantum wires (particulary Bi and BiSb wires). And of course everyone knows by now about Ted Harman's evidence for ZT~0.8-0.9 @ 300 K and ZT~2 @ 500 K in Pb-salt based quantum-dot superlattices. Ted also reported in Boston the first ever quantum-dot cooler (which is also the first PbTe-based cooler), achieving a maximum cooling of 17.3 K. This tour-de-force had 6450 MBE deposited superlattice layers in the p-leg and 4650 layers in the n-leg. Each with about 10E11 dots per square cm. Quite the achievement.

There certainly were other reports of ZT values well over 1. Rama Venkatasubramanian elaborated on his group's work on Bi2Te3-based superlattices with ZT=2.39 +- 0.19. But two poster papers made perhaps the most bold claims. The first was the poster by P. L. Hagelstein of MIT and Y. Kucherov of ENECO, UT USA . This paper was not in the book of abstracts and appears to have been a last minute substitution

Enhancement of Thermal to Electrical Energy Conversion With Thermal Diodes G8.37
P. L. Hagelstein and Y. Kucherov

They claim figure of merit values for their 'thermal diodes' (made from InSb and HgCdTe) 5-8 times over thermoelectric values. And they claim their best results are consistent with 30% of the Carnot efficiency limit.

Their paper from the 2001 Fall MRS Meeting is available to MRS members online (you need your MRS member # to access)

The Hagelstein - Kutcherov paper gained distinction as the only 2001 MRS Fall Meeting paper mentioned in a NY Times article published the same day

.

George Nolas, one of the MRS Symposium organizers, was quoted by the NY Times as saying the Hagelstein/Kutcherov results "would be pretty good news," but that he had not at that time actually seen the paper. The MRS 'News and Highlights' web page for the 2001 Fall Meeting also mentioned this work

And I've just learned (thanks to an alert ZTspam reader) NASA has jumped on the bandwagon, describing the DARPA-funded ENECO-developed energy conversion device in a 'COMPANIES TO WATCH' piece in their Jan. 17, 2002 issue of NASA Tech Briefs. NASA seemed pretty impressed.

If nothing else, these folks do PR very well. It may or may not be germane, but I thought I might mention, as did the NY Times, that ENECO has been associated the University of Utah's cold fusion patents since the early 1990s. Eneco held worldwide licensing rights to cold fusion until 1997 when the US Patent Office rejected the patents.

As impressive as these various results may be, the topper was the poster by Sangmin Lee et al (National Defense Academy, Japan) reporting ZT~1000 in an amorphous Si-Ge-Au phase. Their full paper is not yet available on the MRS website, and their abstract doesn't mention the enormous ZT. ZT=1000 would give you about 94% of Carnot efficiency, which certainly would be pretty good news.

As soon as someone reproduces any of these fascinating results, let me know. Reader comments on these, or any other TE related developments, at .

All in all the MRS Fall Meeting was a great success. Lots of first rate science, and a bit of entertainment to boot.

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+- Body Heat-Powered TE Market Estimated at US$2.5 billion.
Would you believe US$30 Billion?

Advanced Digital Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQADSX) in an October 1, 2001 Press Release estimates market at US$2.5 billion for their new miniaturized thermoelectric generator powered by body heat, trademarked as "Thermo Life". Their initial device reportedly produces 1.5 V and 10 microamps.

By Nov. 28, 2001 Advanced Power Solutions, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Advanced Digital Solutions, Inc. announced receiving their first purchase order for their Thermo Life (TM) thermoelectric generator. Advanced Power Solutions, Inc. now estimates the total market for their type of product as US$30 billion. Must have been one heck of of purchase order!

ADSX recently traded for US$0.41 per share, down from about US$3/share a year ago and a peak of over US$15/share two years ago. Current market capitalization is estimated at $102.6M, according to Yahoo.com.

Full company press releases are available at

Thanks to an alert reader for bringing this story to my attention.

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+- Galileo on Last Legs

NASA announced in a Jan. 15, 2002 News Release that "Galileo's days are numbered now." The old-style spacecraft has orbited Jupiter three times longer and has survived over three times as much radiation as designed.

Why is the spacecraft dying now? It is running out of that propellant stuff needed for attitude control. You may recall that Galileo had a serious failure with it's main antenna early on, resulting in some bruising ridicule. It is worth noting now, however, that the scientific mission has been an unmitigated success, precisely because of the built in redundancy. And by the way, the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators performed flawlessly. Again. Boring old technology that it is. [Note SiGe unicouples, Plutonium heat source.]

When I worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) upper management openly and seriously expounded on the cost of 'overdesign' by people 'at the bench.' Gosh, makes you wonder how much BETTER it would have been with the benefit of modern 'Faster, Better, Cheaper' ideology ... er, I mean design philosophy.

Thanks to an alert reader for bringing this story to my attention.

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ANNOUNCEMENTS
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+- New Thermoelectric Materials Workshop,
Traverse City, MI USA, Aug. 17-21, 2002
'Chemistry, Physics and Materials Science of Thermoelectric Materials
Beyond Bismuth Telluride'
Details
Contact
Register by July 1, 2002

The following information has been abstracted from the above website

New Thermoelectric Materials Workshop
Chemistry, Physics and Materials Science of Thermoelectric Materials Beyond Bismuth Telluride
A workshop sponsored by Michigan State University

To be held in Traverse City, Michigan
Saturday, August 17th - Wednesday, August 21st, 2002

Organizers
Mercouri G Kanatzidis
Timothy P. Hogan
S. D. (Bhanu) Mahanti

Advisory Committee
Millie Dresselhaus MIT
Frank DiSalvo, Cornell Univ.
J-P. Fleurial, Jet Propulsion Lab
Gerry Mahan, Penn State Univ.
George Nolas, Univ. of South Florida
Brian Sales, ORNL
Terry Tritt, Clemson Univ.

Purpose To bring together people from various areas of physics, chemistry and materials science who have an interest in discovering new substances and processes for cooling and power generation. To discuss the current science and challenges facing the field of thermoelectric materials.

Topics for Discussion
New Materials
Structure-Property Relationships
Thermoelectric Transport Theory
Measurements, devices

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Conference Chair Prof. Mercouri Kanatzidis Michigan State University

Conference Secretary Ms. Lorie Neuman Michigan State University

Co Chairs S. D. Mahanti Michigan State University
Timothy P. Hogan Michigan State University
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Accommodations All sessions will be held at the historic Park Place Hotel (photo). A block of rooms has been reserved at the hotel. The conference rate is $134 per night. Please call +1-800-748-0133 (toll-free) or +1-231-946-5000 for reservations. Tell them it is the "Thermoelectric Materials" Conference.

Schedule See website

Invited Speaker List (Partial)
Frank DiSalvo, Cornell
J-P. Fleurial, JPL
Rama Ventkatasubramanian, RTI
Millie Dresselhaus, MIT
Gerry Mahan, Penn State
George Nolas, U South Florida
Ctirad Uher, U. of Michigan
Ted Harman, MIT
John Badding, Penn State
Chen Gang, MIT
Igor Mazin
Glen Slack, RPI
Brian Sales, ORNL
Terry Tritt, Clemson
Otto Sankey, Arizona State
Joe Poon, U. of Virginia

Registration The cost to register is $200 for regular participants and speakers;
$100 for spouses or guests;
$50 for students and for post docs.

Please Register by July 1, 2002. (After July 1 the registration fee will be $250)

Registration Form available on their website.

Hotel Reservations Please make reservations in the The Park-Place Hotel (Tel # 800-748-0133 ). Ask for the special Workshop rate of $134 per night.

See for full details.

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+- ICT2002, Long Beach, California USA, August 25-29, 2002
Details
contact
Deadline for abstracts 1 May 2002
Send abstracts to
Deadline for full paper 25 August 2002

This is the premier annual conference on thermoelectrics, attracting participants from around the world. Save some of your best results and plan to attend ICT2002.

See for details.

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+- First Announcement
7th European Workshop on Thermoelectrics,
Pamplona, Spain, October 3-4th, 2002.
Details
or
contact
Deadline for abstracts July 14, 2002
Notice of acceptance and instruction for authors July 31,2002
Full paper due October 3, 2002 (until 10.00 h)

This important regional conference attracts participants from across Europe, including Russia and Ukraine. It is an important forum for building working relationships among European thermoelectrians and can be particularly useful for people unable to attend ICT2002 in Long Beach, CA USA in August 2002.

The First Announcement follows

7th European Workshop on Thermoelectrics
October 3-4th, 2002. Pamplona, Spain

Organized by
European Thermoelectric Society (ETS)
Universidad Pública de Navarra (UPNa)
E.T.S.de Ingenieros Industriales y Telecomuciones

Scope of the Workshop
The seventh European workshop follows the concept of those previously held in Europe. The workshop will address all aspects of Thermoelectrics activities in Europe, and will be of interest to scientist, engineers and well-informed members of the public and private sectors.

Scientific Program
The scientific program will consist of invited lectures and presentations. Author wishing to present a communication should send an extended abstract (1 page) before July 14th. Papers on, but not limited to, the following topics are welcome

1. THERMOELECTRIC MATERIALS
Bulk material, thin films and heteroestructures
preparation and processing techniques
characterization of structure and transport properties
modeling

2. APPLICATIONS
cooling and heat pump
power electric generation
systems containing thermoelectric components
environmental applications

3. BASIC ASPECTS OF THERMOELECTRICITY
theoretical thermoelectrics
novel approaches and applications
measurements
computational models

Registration
The registration fee, which includes the proceeding, light refreshments,lunch and banquet is

- 225 € for participants
- 150 € for students

Possible modes of payment

- Direct payment in the registration desk
- Account number

Scientific Committee
Prof. J. G.Vián (Spain)
Dr. M.A.Sanz-Bobi (Spain)
Prof. H. Scherrer (France)
Dr. J. Schumann(Germany)
Dr. J. Stockholm (France)
Dr. L.Koudelka (Czech Republic)

Organising Committee
Prof. J. G. Vián (Chairman)
Dr. David Astrain (Secretary)
Juan José Aguas
Lucía Aldave
Jesús Esarte
Ana Melero

Deadlines
Deadline for abstracts July 14
Notice of acceptance and instruction for authors July 31
Full paper October 3 (until 10.00 h)

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That's all for today. Let me know if I forgot anything!
Or if you have News you'd like to pass along... pass it along to me!
- Cronin

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