[ZTnews] Rowe to be an OBE

Submitted by ZTnews Mail List on Wed, 2007-01-10 13:07.

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- ZTnews for 20070110 (That's January 10, 2007)
+ Cronin B. Vining, Listmaster
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CONTENTS
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NEWS:
+- Queen to appoint Prof. D. M. Rowe to OBE
http://www.zts.com/node/4842

+- Ultra Low K = Good Science
http://www.zts.com/node/4838

+- Laird Technologies (Melcor) Acquiers Supercool
http://www.zts.com/node/4841

+- ICT2007 Call for Papers
New Website: http://ict2007.its.org

+- Selected 2007-8 Conference Updates

UPCOMING EVENTS: (+-+- = New Info. See full list below.)
+-+- ICT2007, Jeju Island, KOREA
From: 2007-06-03 Through: 2007-06-07
Location: Jeju Island - Jeju Island, South Korea
Contact: Secretariat of ICT2007 wsseo [at] kicet [dot] re [dot] kr
Ph:+82-02-3282-2496, FAX
Abstract Due Date: Upon Registration
Higher Fees May Apply After: February 25, 2007
Website: http://ict2007.its.org
Info Last Updated: 2007-01-08

+-+- 2007 ELECTRONIC MATERIALS CONFERENCE
From: 2007-06-20 Through: 2007-06-22
Location: University of Notre Dame - Notre Dame, Indiana, USA
Contact for Thermoelectrics & Thermionic Topic:
Jeff Snyder jsnyder [at] caltech [dot] edu
General: Ph:+1 (724) 776-9000, ext. 243, FAX+1 (724) 776-3770
Abstract Due Date: February 2, 2007
Higher Fees May Apply After: June 4, 2007
Website: http://www.tms.org/Meetings/Specialty/EMC07/
Info Last Updated: 2007-01-10

+-+- PacRim7
From: 2007-11-11 Through: 2007-11-14
Location: Shanghai International Convention Center
- Shanghai, CHINA
Contact: Wenqing Zhang wqzhang [at] mail [dot] sic [dot] ac [dot] cn
Ph:+86-21-5241-2416, FAX+86-21-5241-3122
Abstract Due Date: May 1, 2007
Higher Fees May Apply After: September 30, 2007
Website: http://www.sic.ac.cn/meeting/pacrim7/
Info Last Updated: 2007-01-10

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NEWS:
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+- Queen to appoint Prof. D. M. Rowe to OBE
http://www.zts.com/node/4842

Professor D. M. Rowe [1] of Cardiff, scientist, author, editor, and
organizer is well known to the thermoelectric community. Now he has come
to the attention of no less than the Queen of England. The Queen has
announced the Honour of appointinting Prof. Rowe an Officer in the Order
of the British Empire (OBE). I'm fairly certain no other member of the
thermoelectric community has been so Honoured.

The Honour has been formally announced in:

The London Gazette [2]
of Friday 29 December 2006
Supplement No. 1

The following has been excerpted from The London Gazette:

"The Queen has been graciously pleased to give orders for the following
promotions in, and appointments to the Most Excellent Order of the
British Empire:"

"To be Ordinary Officers of the Civil Division of the said Most
Excellent Order:"

"Professor David Michael Rowe, Professor of Thermoelectrics, Cardiff
University. For services to Technology."

Queen Elizabeth II will present the Honour to Prof. Rowe at Buckingham
Palace sometime in early summer 2007.

Congratulations Mike Rowe, OBE! Well done!

Links:
[1] http://www.thermoelectrics.com/group%20members/group_dmr.htm
[2] http://www.gazette-online.co.uk/download.asp?docId=1119886

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+- Ultra Low K = Good Science
http://www.zts.com/node/4838

Last summer at ICT2006 in Vienna David Johnson of the University of
Oregon presented a paper (Johnson et al, "Engineering Low Thermal
Conductivity in Novel Thermoelectric Materials", presented at ICT2006
but does not appear in the Proceedings) which is of interest both for
the scientific results, but also because it represents an excellent
example of how Good Science is done. Sadly, the paper does not appear in
the Conference Proceedings, but that work (and more) has now appeared in
Science [1] (see below for a link to the Science manuscript). I've
waited until now to comment, to give Johnson and his collaborators time
to publish their results. But much of my commentary is based on his
presentation in Vienna, some of which does not appear in the Science
article.

Breifly, WSe_2 has a hexagonal sheet-like structure with strong bonds
within the a-b plane and weak bonds perpendicular to the plane. When
prepared by the by modulated elemental reactants (MER) method, the
crystalline orientation in the a-b plane appears to be completely
random. Johnson et al reports thermal conductivity in the c-direction
(normal to the a-b plane) at 300 K is about 0.05 W/m-K. 30 times lower
than a single crystal and 6 times lower than the 'theoretical minimum'.
As the Science article reports, the "lowest thermal conductivity
ever observed in a fully dense solid". Indeed, one astonished observer
in Vienna remarked that it was "lower than still air".

A dense solid that conducts heat as badly as a gas. All I can say is "neat".

No, it will not likely win a Nobel Prize, spark another "Woodstock of
Physics", or garner headlines in the New York Times or Wall Street
Journal. It will probably not even lead to a breakthrough in ZT,
although that possibility is certainly not zero.

Still, Johnson's paper is a model of Good Science because, among other
things:
- the expected result did not happen
- an unexpected result did and they recognized the difference
- they checked their work by gathering good statistics on multiple samples
- and they performed corroborating estimates and measurements.

The first characteristic (that the expected result did not happen) is
neither necessary nor sufficient for Good Science, but if you always get
what you expect one worries that you may be delusional or not trying
hard enough.

I'll elaborate a bit on his experiment, as I understand it. I say 'his',
but this is merely shorthand because the team consists of collaborators
from several institutions. For some years he has been developing a
synthesis method known as 'modulated elemental reaction', MER. This
preparation method involves chemical deposition of layers of elements
followed by annealing at fairly low temperatures.

The annealing triggers chemical reactions which, however, are inhibited
from going to full completion by the slow kinetics of diffusion. Pretty
high quality metastable superlattices can result, with distinct
superlattice XRD peaks.

With this nice synthesis method in hand, he set out to make
'nanolaminates' with layers of the wide band gap semiconductor WSe2
(tungsten diselenide) and layers of a titanium metal between. The idea
was that the nanolaminate, with such different bonding, would lead to
very low thermal conductivity values across the laminate.

Initial results were encouraging in that very low thermal conductivity
values did indeed result: indeed, nearly an order of magnitude lower
than the lowest expected result, the so-called 'minimum lattice thermal
conductivity'. Since low values were sought and found, many studies
would have happily published their results as 'proof' that the Ti metal
layers were the cause of the low k values.

Something, I know not what, motivated Johnson to look further. After
all, at this stage one does not actually have proof of anything. You do
have a recipe (for making a certain type of sample) and some
observations, but you do not know if the recipe is causally connected
only incidental to the result. So Johnson made what amounts to 'control'
samples: samples prepared by essentially the same method but without the
Ti metal layers.

This gave surprise number 1: the thermal conductivity was just as low
without the Ti layers. It is not easy, psychologically, to abandon one's
hypothesis even when the evidence points elsewhere. Good Science
sometimes demands you do so, even if it means admitting your initial
hunch was wrong.

At the same time the stubbornly low k values was surprise number 2: it
was not immediately obvious that these 'control' samples should have
such low k. Was it true, and if so why? So they measured many samples,
with various experimental parameters and they were all uniformly low,
some lower than others. They also measured some of the samples more than
once.

Repeated measurements on the same sample speaks to the precision of the
measurements, which was quite good. Measurement of multiple samples
speaks to the reproducibility, which was also good. One sample had a k
value (confirmed by repeated measurements) well below the population of
the others, but all were quite low. That one sample has yet to be
explained, but including it in the report is much in the spirit of the
"warts and all" principle I've discussed previously.

At face value these experimental results appear to challenge the
'minimum thermal conductivity' (kmin) idea introduced most lucidly by
G.A. Slack (although the idea has roots going back to Einstein). The
kmin idea is that phonons are waves, which travel with some velocity
(vs) for some distance (d) at which point they are scattered. Slack's
idea for kmin is to imagine that each phonon travels exactly one
wavelength, putting a lower limit on 'd'. Slack's formula for kmin is
proportional to vs and d, and has a factor for the number of atoms per
unit cell which accounts for the number of heat carrying acoustic phonon
modes per unit cell. There are several other formulas one can choose
from to estimate kmin and they can give answers differing by a factor of
2 or so.

Johnson's results, which were much lower than the classical kmin estimate
for the compositions in question, presents some challenge to the whole
idea. So Johnson measured the sound velocity, vs, in his samples and
found it to be much lower than the corresponding bulk values. Sound
velocity is often a fairly robust proxy for the bonding in a material,
typically correlating well with properties like hardness and melting point.

The low vs values in Johnson's nanolaminates qualitatively accounts for
the low k values and also suggests the layers are only weakly bonded to
each other. One wit in a hallway conversation referred to such materials
as 'crackers', which one is not surprised to find have low thermal
conductivity.

I'll be surprised (pleasantly so, and not for the first time) if good
electrical proper can be achieved across these crackers (aka
nanolaminates). But the work remains really Good Science in any case.
You may not be able to control what the answer turns out to be, but the
most efficient path to good and useful results must be through doing
Good Science. And doing Good Science is in your control.

Be like Johnson:
- question your hypothesis, even when initial results superficially
support it
- be alert to interesting results not imagined in your philosophy
- check your results with controls and statistics
- do BOTEC estimates and corroborating measurements

These things are neither sufficient nor necessary to Good Science. But
they help.

Reference:
1. Chiritescu, C., Cahill, D. G., Nguyen, N., Johnson, D., Bodapati, A.,
Keblinski, P., and Zschack, P., Ultralow Thermal Conductivity in
Disordered, Layered WSe2 Crystals, Science, 1136494, 2006.

To access a pdf of the article, go to David Cahill's publication page:
http://users.mrl.uiuc.edu/cahill/pubs.html [1]

and scroll to bottom of the page. Click on the link to Reference 124.

Links:
[1] http://users.mrl.uiuc.edu/cahill/pubs.html

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+- Laird Technologies (Melcor) Acquiers Supercool
http://www.zts.com/node/4841

Laird Technologies [1] announced on December 6, 2006 the acquisition of
Supercool [2] (Coollab AB). the Gothenburg, Sweden based "provider of
custom designed thermoelectric based assemblies" with 2006 sales of
about US$11M, according to the Laird Press Release. [3]

Laird acquired Melcor [3] for about US$20M in late 2005.

Links:
[1] http://www.lairdtech.com/
[2] http://www.supercool.se/
[3] http://www.melcor.com/supercool.html

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+- ICT2007 Call for Papers
From: ICT2007
New Website: http://ict2007.its.org

Dear. All ITS members and whom it may concern

Call for Papers

The Korean Scientific Committee for ICT 2007 is pleased to invite you
for paper submission both for oral and poster presentation, and the
topics are to be in regards with the categories as below:

We are planning to have conference abstracts printed in a scientific
citation indexing journal, â€œSolid State Phenomenaâ€ (SSP). For the
further development of ICT and to enhance the standing of the
conference, we would appreciate the active participation of all
participants.

Therefore, those wishing to be published by SSP must submit a 4- to
6-page full paper along with its publication and dispatch fees which
should be paid separately from the conference registration fee.

In addition to publishing ICT 2007 presentations in a SCI journal, the
scientific committee also plans to separately print a book of
proceedings containing all the presentations from the conference. For
those who arenâ€™t interested in SSP publication, they can submit a 2-page
informal paper for publication in the book of proceedings.

Informal and full papers alike must be submitted at the time of
registration. The book of proceedings will be distributed during ICT
2007 while the SSP Journal will come out in September 2007.

We are looking forward to the continued active participation of Japan,
the Americas, Europe, China, and Asia in presenting a wide variety of
research findings as well as in creating a network of human resources in
our field.

The venue for ICT 2007, Jeju, is known as the Hawaii of Asia. During our
conference in June, the weather is expected to be clear, with the blue
skies harmonizing with the azure ocean. We hope to see all of you in Jeju!

Korean Scientific Committee for ICT2007

Submitting Papers

Categories for Contributed Program

When submitting a paper, you will be asked to select the one category
from the list below that is nearest to your topic. The program committee
will use the category you indicate to help them organize the abstracts
into sessions, but may also regroup sessions around other themes that
emerge from the submissions. Please feel free to submit a paper on a
topic that may be somewhat outside of this list. The committee cannot
anticipate all of the topics that might be received; indeed, part of the
purpose of a conference is to go beyond the usual categories and
boundaries. We welcome presentations on topics that do not fit squarely
in one of the listed categories, as long as they relate to some
quantitative aspect of thermoelectrics research.

Topics

1. General Topics in Thermoelectricity
A. Policies for Renewal Energy
B. Present & Future of Thermoelectric Technology
C. System Performance
D. Introduction of New Materials or System Development
E. Prospect for new TE
F. Elements basis

2. Theories & Phenomena of Thermoelectricity

3. Materials
A. Clathrates
B. Oxides
C. Skutterudites
D. Tellurides
E. Heusler Alloys
F. Borides

4. Charactrization & Measurement
- Nano Materials
- Simulation of TE properties

5. System construction & Application
A. Thermoelectric Cooling
B. Generators
C. Microelements
D. Other Application

6. Heat Managements
A. Thermal challenges in Next Renewal Energy
B. Heat Control for High TE system Efficiency
C. General Heat Exchange & Transfer

Important Dates

Abstract Submission Deadline
March 03, 2007

Notice of Abstract Acceptance
April 30, 2007

Advance/Early Conference Registration
February 25/April 30, 2007

Accommodation Deadline
May 25, 2007

ICT2007 official website
http://www.ict2007.net/english

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+- Selected 2007-8 Conference Updates

ICT2007 to be held in South Korea now has a website, available at:
http://ict2007.its.org

Abstract and Manuscript instructions for ECT2007 to be held in Odessa,
Ukraine have been updated at:
http://ect2007.thermion-company.com

And two new additions have been added to the roster of 2007 conferences
with thermoelectric-related content:
2007 Electronic Materials Conference (abstracts due Feb. 2, 2007)
and
PacRim7 to be held in Shanghai, China in Nov. 2007

This brings to 9 the number of conferences with with
thermoelectric-related content in 2007 alone, that I'm aware of.
Another banner year. I'm looking for a sponsor to award a prize to the
person who attends the most meetings.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
UPCOMING EVENTS ( +-+- = New or Updated Information):
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+- Thermal Challenges in Next Generation Electronic Systems
(THERMES 2007)
2007-01-07 Through: 2007-01-10 (check event website for times)
- Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Contact: Professor Suresh V. Garimella sureshg [at] ecn [dot] purdue [dot] edu
Ph:, FAX
Abstract Due Date: June 9, 2006
Higher Fees May Apply After:
http://www.engconfintl.org/7acbody.html
Info Last Updated: 2006-11-08

+- 2007 APS March Meeting
- Physics of Thermoelectric Materials and Phenomena
2007-03-05 Through: 2007-03-09 (check event website for times)
Adam's Mark Hotel, + Convention Center - Denver, CO, USA
Contact: Jihui Yang jihui [dot] yang [at] gm [dot] com
Ph:+1 586-986-9789, FAX+1 586-986-3091
Abstract Due Date: Nov. 20, 2006
Higher Fees May Apply After: Jan. 5, 2007
http://www.aps.org/meet/MAR07/
Info Last Updated: 2006-11-07

+-+- ICT2007, Jeju Island, KOREA
From: 2007-06-03 Through: 2007-06-07
Location: Jeju Island - Jeju Island, South Korea
Contact: Secretariat of ICT2007 wsseo [at] kicet [dot] re [dot] kr
Ph:+82-02-3282-2496, FAX
Abstract Due Date: Upon Registration
Higher Fees May Apply After: February 25, 2007
Website: http://ict2007.its.org
Info Last Updated: 2007-01-08

+- Space Nuclear Conference 2007 (SNC '07)
2007-06-24 Through: 2007-06-28 (check event website for times)
- Boston, MA, USA
Contact: Lynne Schreiber, Conference Administrator space [at] ans [dot] org
Ph:+1 352-392-9722, FAX+1 352-392-8656
Abstract Due Date: December 1, 2006
Higher Fees May Apply After:
http://www.ans.org/goto/space07
Info Last Updated: 2006-09-02

+- 5th International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference
and Exhibit (IECEC)
2007-06-25 Through: 2007-06-29 (check event website for times)
Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark - St. Louis, MO, USA
Contact: Henry W. Brandhorst, Jr., Chair brandhh [at] auburn [dot] edu
Ph:+1 334/844-5894, FAX+1 334/844-5900
Abstract Due Date: January 8, 2007
Higher Fees May Apply After:
http://www.aiaa.org/events/iecec
Info Last Updated: 2006-10-30

+-+- ECT2007 - 5th European Conference on Thermoelectrics
From: 2007-09-09 Through: 2007-09-12
Location: - Odessa, Ukraine
Contact: Vladimir Semenyuk ect2007 [at] ets-thermion [dot] org
Ph:+380 (482) 63-8324, FAX+380 (48) 760-1834
Abstract Due Date: May 1, 2007
Higher Fees May Apply After: June 15, 2007
Website: http://ect2007.thermion-company.com
Info Last Updated: 2006-12-20

+-+- XIIth International Forum on Thermoelectricity
From: 2007-07-15 Through: 2007-07-20
Location: Institute of Thermoelectricity - Chernivtsi, Ukraine
Contact: Zibachynska Tetyana forum [at] inst [dot] cv [dot] ua
Ph:+(380 3722) 58 56 48, 4 19 17,
FAX(380 03722) 4 19 17; 7 68 30
Abstract Due Date: June 15, 2007
Higher Fees May Apply After: June 15, 2007
Website: http://ite.cv.ukrtel.net/forum/
Info Last Updated: 2006-11-17

+-+- ICT2008, Corvalis, Oregon USA
From: 2007-08-03 Through: 2007-08-07
Location: LaSells Stewart Conference - Corvallis, Oregon, USA
Contact: David Johnson davej [at] uoregon [dot] edu
Ph:+1 541-346-4612, FAX
Abstract Due Date:
Higher Fees May Apply After:
Website: http://www.its.org
Info Last Updated: 2006-12-20

--
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That's all for today. Let me know if I forgot anything!

- Cronin

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[ZTnews] Rowe to be an OBE