Materials grown by electrochemical techniques: The route towards sustainable materials for energy

  • Date: Jun 7, 2024
  • Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Dr. Cristina Vicente Manzano
  • Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)
  • Location: Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH
  • Room: Large Conference Room No. 203
  • Host: on invitation of Dr. James Best and Prof. Gerhard Dehm
 Materials grown by electrochemical techniques: The route towards sustainable materials for energy
In recent decades, extensive efforts have been done to develop new and more efficient alternative energy sources, which can substitute conventional sources like gas, petrol, and carbon, have been made. Due to the increase in energy consumed by society, we not only need an alternative to conventional energy sources, but also a reduction in energy consumption. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate different methods for energy-recovery and energy-saving as such as thermoelectric materials and radiative coolers. The thermoelectric materials can convert heat into electricity and vice versa. The efficiency of these materials is related to the figure of merit (zT) and it is defined as zT=(σ·S2/kT, where σ is the electrical conductivity, S is the Seebeck coefficient, k is the thermal conductivity, and T is the absolute temperature. Nowadays, the application of inexpensive and scalable materials in the industry for thermoelectric applications has received great interest. In this sense electrodeposition is one of the most interesting techniques. It is performed at room temperature, so it is compatible with polymeric substrates, it does not require vacuum conditions, and it allows perfect control over the composition, morphology, and crystallographic structure. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of different thermoelectric materials such as Bi2Te31, CuNi2, and Ag2Se3 grown by electrodeposition and their thermoelectric properties. In the case of silver selenide, a thermoelectric power generator was produced and characterized. Radiative cooling is the process by which temperature decreases due to an excess of emitted radiation above absorber radiation. To achieve cooling, it is necessary to reduce and keep the temperature below the ambient air temperature. The requirements of radiative coolers to have maximum cooling power, to be able to reduce the temperature sufficiently, and to function 24 hours a day anywhere, are high solar reflectance and high infrared emittance, close to the atmosphere’s window (between 8 and 13μm wavelengths). Different approaches have been explored and porous nanostructures have shown the best results to this respect. In this sense, porous anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) nanostructures on Al was demonstrated to be a great candidate4. AAO is an amorphous material with an isotropic permittivity, a strong acoustic resonance absorption at the far IR (15 – 25 µm), and high transparency in the UV‑Vis‑NIR range. In this presentation, I will highlight the possibilities to use AAO nanostructure as radiative cooling. In addition, strcutural cellulose will be also analysed for the same purpose.

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