As concerns with the efficient use of energy resources, and the minimization of environmental damage have come to the fore, there has been a renewed interest in the role that thermoelectric devices could play in generating electricity from waste heat, enabling cooling via refrigerators with no moving parts, and many other more specialized applications. The main problem in realizing this ambition is the rather low efficiency of such devices for general applications. This book deals with the proceedings of a workshop addressed that problems by reviewing the latest experimental and theoretical work on suitable materials for device applications and by exploring various strategies that might increase their efficiency.

The proceedings cover a broad range of approaches, from the experimental work of fabricating new compounds through to theoretical work in characterizing and understanding their properties. The effects of strong electron correlation, disorder, the proximity to metal-insulator transitions, the properties of layered composite materials, and the introduction of voids or cages into the structure to reduce the lattice thermal conductivity are all explored as ways of enhancing the efficiency of their use in thermoelectric devices.

Inhalt

Strongly Correlated Electron Phenomena in the filled Skutterudites; M. B. Maple et al.- Role of Structures on Thermal Conductivity in Thermoelectric Materials; C. Godart et al.- New Approaches to Thermoelectric Materials; A.P. Gonçalves et al.- Thermoelectric Effect in Transition Metal Oxides; W. Koshibae and S. Maekawa.- Thermoelectric Power of Correlated Compounds; N. Oeschler et al.- Thermoelectric Power and Thermal Transport of Anomalous Rare-earth Kondo Compounds; B. Coqblin et al.- Thermoelectrics Near the Mott Localization-Delocalization Transition; K. Haule and G. Kotliar.- Quasiparticles, Magnetization Dynamics, and thermopower of Yb-based Heavy-Fermion Compounds; G. Zwicknagl.-The LDA-I-DMFT Route to Identify Good Thermoelectrics; K. Held et al.- Theory of Electronic Transport and Thermoelectricity in Ordered and Disordered Heavy Fermion Systems; C. Grenzebach et al.- Role of Multiple Subband Renormalization in the Electronic Transport of Correlated Oxide Superlattices; Andreas Rüegg et al.- Thermoelectric Properties of Junctions Between Metal and Models of Strongly Correlated Semiconductors; M. Rontani and L. J. Sham.- Theory of the Nernst Effect Caused by Fluctuations of the Superconducting Order Parameter; K. Michaeli and A. M. Finkel'stein.- Quantum Criticality in Heavy Electron Compounds; M. C. Bennett et al.-Resistivity of Mn1-x Fe x xSi Single Crystals: Evidence for Quantum Critical Behavior; Chr. Meingast et al.- Electron Spectroscopy of Correlated Transition Metal Oxides; K. Maiti.- Orbital Fluctuations in the RVO3 Perovskites; A. M. O1es and P. Horsch.-Low Energy Scales of Kondo Lattices: Mean-Field Perspective; S. Burdin.