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Emf comparing device nondestructively inspects metals and alloys for conformance to a chemical specification. It uses the Seebeck effect to measure the difference in emf produced by the junction of a hot probe and the junction of a cold contact on the surface of an unknown metal.
An upper limit is placed on the average crustal conductivity from an investigation of toroidal (V x B) induction in the moon, using ten-minute data intervals of simultaneous lunar orbiting and surface magnetometer data. Crustal conductivity is determined as a function of crust thickness. For an average global crust thickness of about 80 km, the crust surface electrical conductivity is of the order of 1 hundred millionth mho/m. The toroidal-induction results lower the surface-conductivity limit obtained from poloidal-induction results by approximately four orders of magnitude. In addition, a thermoelectric (Seebeck effect) generator model is presented as a magnetic-field source for thermoremanent magnetization of the lunar crust during its solidification and cooling. Magnetic fields from 1000 to 10,000 gammas are calculated for various crater and crustal geometries. Solidified crustal material cooling through the iron Curie temperature in the presence of such ancient lunar fields could have received thermoremanent magnetization consistent with that measured in most returned lunar samples.
The Seebeck effect in metals plays an important role in cryomodule design and performance. As the cryomodule is cooled from room temperature to nominal cavity operating temperature of 2 K, components in the cryomodule experience varying temperatures. Some components such as power couplers have gradients from 300 K to 2 K. Such gradients and metallic paths form thermo-electric current loops that circulate through and around the niobium cavities. These currents will generate an additional magnetic field that could be trapped in the cavity wall during superconducting transition, as well as during cavity quench. This trapped field can degrade the cavity’s quality factor and increase heat load. A simple circuit model is proposed and compared to a calculated trapped field during LCLS-II cryomodule tests.
The unloaded quality factor Q0 of many 5-cell CEBAF cavities were lowered by a factor of ~2 from their vertical qualification testing to their beam operation in CEBAF tunnel. Causes of this Q0 degradation were studied previously, including a more recent one addressing static fluxes arising from magnetic components near a 5-cell cavity. This paper reports on a preliminary study of the dynamic fluxes generated by a thermal current. Such a thermal current arises from the Seebeck effect and flows in closed loops formed by a niobium cavity and its surrounding tuner rods and liquid helium vessel that are made of stainless-steel. The behaviors of magnetic fluxes in response to various thermal profiles on a 5-cell CEBAF cavity with integrated tuner rods were studied in a JLAB VTA dewar. An outcome of this study is a proposed cool-down procedure for eliminating the thermal current generated magnetic fluxes around 5-cell cavities placed in CEBAF tunnels. This procedure may be useful to improve cavity Q0 in a cost-effective manner, which in turn saves cryogenic expenditures for sustaining CEBAF operation.
The thermoelectric properties of Heusler-type Fe{sub 2−x}V{sub 1+x}Al{sub 1−y}Si{sub y} and Fe{sub 2−x}V{sub 1+x−y}Ti{sub y}Al alloys have been investigated to clarify which off-stoichiometric alloy, i.e., V-rich (x > 0) or V-poor (x < 0), is more effective in enhancing the Seebeck coefficient when doped by Si and Ti, while retaining a low electrical resistivity. Large Seebeck coefficients of −182 μV/K and 110 μV/K at 300 K are obtained for n-type Fe{sub 1.95}V{sub 1.05}Al{sub 0.97}Si{sub 0.03} and p-type Fe{sub 2.04}V{sub 0.93}Ti{sub 0.03}Al, respectively. When the Seebeck coefficient is plotted as a function of valence electron concentration (VEC), the VEC dependence for the doped off-stoichiometric alloys falls on characteristic curves depending on the off-stoichiometric composition x. It is concluded that a larger Seebeck coefficient with a negative sign can be obtained for the V-rich alloys rather than the V-poor alloys, whilst good p-type materials are always derived from the V-poor alloys. Substantial enhancements in the Seebeck coefficient for the off-stoichiometric alloys could be achieved by a favorable modification in the electronic structure around the Fermi level through the antisite V or Fe defect formation.
Here we report that CdTe alloying and Sb doping increase the density-of-states effective mass and introduce endotaxial nanostructuring in n-type PbTe, resulting in enhanced thermoelectric performance. A prior theoretical prediction for the presence of resonance states in the conduction band of this system, however, could not be confirmed. An amount of 3 mol % CdTe alloying widens the band gap of PbTe by 50%, leading to enhanced carrier effective mass and Seebeck coefficient. This effect is even more pronounced at high temperatures where the solubility of CdTe increases. At 800 K, when the carrier concentration is the same (4 × 10 19 cm -3 ), the Seebeck coefficient of CdTe-alloyed PbTe is -195 μV K -1 , 16% higher than that of the Cd-free control sample (-168 μV K -1 ). Sb doping considerably increases the electron concentration of Pb 0.97 Cd 0.03 Te, giving rise to optimized power factors of ~17 μW cm -1 K -2 at 800 K. More importantly, Sb induces strained endotaxial nanostructures evenly distributed in the matrix. Furthermore, these Sb-rich nanostructures account for the ~40% reduction in the lattice thermal conductivity over the whole measured temperature range. As a result, a maximum ZT of 1.2 is attained at 750 K in 0.5 mol % Sb-doped Pb 0.97 Cd 0.03 Te alloys.
Here we have measured the Seebeck and anomalous Nernst coefficients and corresponding transverse and longitudinal thermoelectric conductivities from 2 to 400 K in thin film (thickness t ~10 nm) Co 2 MnAl x Si 1-x (0 ≤ x ≤ 1) and Co 2 FeAl grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). A large (-14 A m -1 K -1 at 300 K) anomalous component of the transverse thermoelectric conductivity is observed in Co 2 MnAl, especially as contrasted to Co 2 MnSi (0.28 A m -1 K -1 at 300 K). This enhancement is likely due to Weyl points close to the Fermi level of Co 2 MnAl which disappear as x decreases.
Strain effect on thermoelectricity of orthorhombic SnSe is studied using density function theory. The Seebeck coefficients are obtained by solving Boltzmann Transport equation (BTE) with interpolated band energies. As expected from the crystal structure, calculated Seebeck coefficients are highly anisotropic, and agree well with experiment. Changes in the Seebeck coefficients are presented, when strain is applied along b and c direction with strength from -3% to +3%, where influence by band gaps and band dispersions are significant. Moreover, for compressive strains, the sign change of Seebeck coefficients at particular direction suggests that the bipolar transport is possible for SnSe.
Size effects in thermoelectric Na{sub x}CoO{sub 2} thin films are studied, focusing on the electrical resisitivity and Seebeck coefficient. For very thin films below 10 nm, we have observed an increase in resistivity, which is in agreement with theoretical models. In contrast to a predicted simultaneous suppression of the Seebeck coefficient for ultrathin films, we observe a constant Seebeck coefficient as a function of layer thickness due to changes in the structural properties as well as the presence of strong electron correlations. This preserved high Seebeck coefficient opens up new directions for Na{sub x}CoO{sub 2} ultrathin films as basic building blocks in thermoelectric superlattices with enhanced phonon scattering.
The cross-plane thermoelectric transport properties of La{sub 0.67}Sr{sub 0.33}MnO{sub 3} (LSMO)/LaMnO{sub 3} (LMO) oxide metal/semiconductor superlattices were investigated. The LSMO and LMO thin-film depositions were performed using pulsed laser deposition to achieve low resistivity constituent materials for LSMO/LMO superlattice heterostructures on (100)-strontium titanate substrates. X-ray diffraction and high-resolution reciprocal space mapping indicate that the superlattices are epitaxial and pseudomorphic. Cross-plane devices were fabricated by etching cylindrical pillar structures in superlattices using inductively, this coupled-plasma reactive-ion etching. The cross-plane electrical conductivity data for LSMO/LMO superlattices reveal a lowering of the effective barrier height to 223 meV as well as an increase in cross-plane conductivity by an order of magnitude compared to high resistivity superlattices. These results suggest that controlling the oxygen deficiency in the constituent materials enables modification of the effective barrier height and increases the cross-plane conductivity in oxide superlattices. The cross-plane LSMO/LMO superlattices showed a giant Seebeck coefficient of 2560 {mu}V/K at 300 K that increases to 16 640 {mu}V/K at 360 K. The giant increase in the Seebeck coefficient with temperature may include a collective contribution from the interplay of charge, spin current, and phonon drag. The low resistance oxide superlattices exhibited a room temperature cross-plane thermal conductivity of 0.92 W/m K, this indicating that the suppression of thermal conductivities due to the interfaces is preserved in both low and high resistivity superlattices. The high Seebeck coefficient, the order of magnitude improvement in cross-plane conductivity, and the low thermal conductivity in LSMO/LMO superlattices resulted in a two order of magnitude increase in cross-plane power factor and thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT), compared to the properties of superlattices with higher resistivity that were reported previously. The temperature dependence of the cross-plane power factor in low resistance superlattices suggests a direction for further investigations of the potential LSMO/LMO oxide superlattices for thermoelectric devices.
Theoretical and experimental studies on the ratchet effects in graphene and in quantum wells with a lateral superlattice excited by alternating electric fields of terahertz frequency range are presented. We discuss the Seebeck ratchet effect and helicity driven photocurrents and show that the photocurrent generation is based on the combined action of a spatially periodic in-plane potential and a spatially modulated light.
To begin, thermoelectric effects, measured by the Seebeck coefficients, refer to the phenomena in which a temperature difference or gradient imposed across a thermoelectric material induces an electrical potential difference or gradient, and vice versa, enabling the direct conversion of thermal and electric energies. All existing first-principles calculations of Seebeck coefficients have been based on the Boltzmann kinetic transport theory. In this work, we present a fundamentally different method for the first-principles calculations of Seebeck coefficients without using any assumptions of the electron-scattering mechanism, being in contrast to the traditional theory by Cutler and Mott that shows the dependence of the Seebeck coefficient on the scattering mechanisms. It is shown that the Seebeck coefficient is a well-defined thermodynamic quantity that can be determined from the change in the chemical potential of electrons induced by the temperature change and thus can be computed solely based on the electronic density of states through first-principles calculations at different temperatures. The proposed approach is demonstrated using the prototype PbTe and SnSe thermoelectric materials.
The case of axisymmetric ILC-type cavities with titanium helium vessels is investigated. A first-order estimate for magnetic field within the SRF current layer is presented. The induced magnetic field is found to be not more than 1.4x10 -8 Tesla = 0.14 milligauss for the case of axial symmetry. Magnetic fields due to symmetry breaking effects are discussed.
We have investigated the influence of the spin-dependent scattering on the heat transports in NiFe/Cu/NiFe and Co/Cu/Co tri-layered nanowires. The thermal conductivity and its spin dependence for the tri-layered wires have been evaluated by using an integrated nano-sized thermo couple. We find that the thermal spin-valve effect is always approximately 8 times larger than the electrical spin-valve effect, namely giant magnetoresistance effect. The numerical simulation with the experimental results enable us to estimate the thermal conductivity for the tri-layered wire and its spin dependence. Surprisingly, the spin dependence of the thermal conductivity for the Co/Cu/Co wire is as high as 8%, which is much larger than the electrical one. This indicates a high potential application of the thermal spin-valve effect.
The major goals of this project were: 1. To study thermal transport in systems of disordered electrons in the presence of the long-range Coulomb interaction, 2. To combine the Quantum Kinetic Equation approach with the Renormalization Group analysis of disordered interacting electrons for studying thermal transport near the Metal Insulator Transition, 3. To study thermal transport and thermopower in systems of disordered electrons in the presence of strong electron-electron collisions at intermediate temperatures, and 4. To study the effects of out of plane vibrations on the thermal transport in graphene.
In this work we present the thermoelectric properties of tin selenide (SnSe) and sulfur doped tin selenide(SnSe{sub (1-x)}S{sub x}, x= 0.125 and 0.25) obtained using first principles calculations. We investigated the electronic band structure using the FP-LAPW method within the sphere of the density functional theory. Thermoelectric properties were calculated using BOLTZTRAP code using the constant relaxation time approximation at three different temperatures 300, 600 and 800 K. Seebeck coefficient (S) was found to decrease with increasing temperature, electrical conductivity (σ/τ) was almost constant in the entire temperature range and thermal conductivity (κ/τ) increased with increasing temperature for all samples. Sulfur doped samples showed enhanced seebeck coefficient, decreased thermal conductivity and decreased electrical conductivity at all temperatures. At 300 K, S increased from 1500 µV/K(SnSe) to 1720μV/K(SnSe{sub 0.75}S{sub 0.25}), thermal conductivity decreased from 5 × 10{sup 15} W/mKs(SnSe) to 3 × 10{sup 15} W/mKs(SnSe{sub 0.75}S{sub 0.25}), electrical conductivity decreased from 7 × 10{sup 20}/Ωms(SnSe) to 5 × 10{sup 20} /Ωms(SnSe{sub 0.75}S{sub 0.25}). These calculations show that sulfur doped tin selenide exhibit better thermoelectric properties than undoped tin selenide.
Thermoelectric (TE) devices can harvest residual low-grade waste heat energy. Bismuth telluride (Bi{sub 2}Te{sub 3}) and its alloys are mostly used TE materials in the bulk form for making TE modules. We report a simple, fast and very high yield synthetic process for the bulk Bi{sub 2}Te{sub 3} nanopowders with hexagonal plate like morphology. Spark plasma sintering (SPS) process has been optimized in order to preserve nanostructure while achieving a high compaction density of the pellets. Electron microscopy analysis was used to determine the effect of SPS parameters during compaction on the grain growth. Optimal conditions for the fabricated nanopowder was determined as 673 K, 70 MPa pressure with no holding time, which resulted in average lateral grain size in the range of 165-190 nm for a compact density of 98%. About 50% reduction of thermal conductivity was observed as compared to its bulk counterparts, revealing the feasibility of suggested route in the preservation of nanostructure and enhanced phonon scattering.