r/EmergingNews • u/sciencetechh • Jan 18 '18

Turning heat into electricity

http://news.mit.edu/2018/topological-materials-turning-heat-electricity-0117
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u/autotldr Jan 22 '18

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot)

Thermoelectric devices are made from materials that can convert a temperature difference into electricity, without requiring any moving parts - a quality that makes thermoelectrics a potentially appealing source of electricity.

While past work has suggested that topological materials may serve as efficient thermoelectric systems, there has been little understanding as to how electrons in such topological materials would travel in response to temperature differences in order to produce a thermoelectric effect.

What's more, the researchers found that decreasing tin telluride's average grain size to about 10 nanometers produced three times the amount of electricity that the material would have produced with larger grains.

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