Taming the Lost Heat, Training and Research in Thermoelectrics

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This industrial stream CREATE proposal focuses on gains in energy efficiency to provide advantages to Canadian manufacturing and address global climate change. There is a unique opportunity to improve efficiency by recapturing the more than half of all energy lost to heat.1 A key tool to achieve this need are thermoelectric (TE) materials where a temperature differential generates a voltage (or vice-versa). Recent advances in applying nano-technology to TE suggest their efficiency can be doubled2, which in the U.S. would reduce industry's energy use by 1.6 Trillion Btu/year.3 TE will also impact a number of other industries including Server, Residential, and Commercial cooling systems, as well as automotive fuel efficiency. Next generation TE devices require making, modeling, and measuring materials with unprecedented controls. Thus stakeholders require highly skilled employees capable of working across disciplines, evaluating new technologies, and implementing scientific results. We will achieve this by building a CREATE program with various academic, industrial and governmental partners. Thus this consortium will address the priority areas of Natural Resources and Energy as well as Manufacturing.