DETERMINATION: Doped Thermo Electric Materials in Automotive Applications.

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The current climate for improved energy efficiency is driving the automotive market to seek ways of capturing waste energy from car exhausts. This will improve fuel consumption and reduce pollution while also reducing the levels of carbon dioxide emitted. Current materials for thermoelectric (TE) generators are typically based on compounds that are scarce, expensive and environmentally unsound. Other TE materials including silicides do not suffer from these drawbacks but their peak performance lies outside of the temperature range experienced within an automotive exhaust. DETERMINATION will address these limitations by applying Density Functional Theory (DFT) computational modelling to engineer the band gap of novel silicide thermoelectric materials. Model materials will be synthesised using plasma torch technology to deliver doped silicide thermoelectrics that exhibit superior ZT values that peak in the temperature range 200-450 oC.