Energy Harvesting Nanomaterials: Synthesis, Characterizations and Applications

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Global energy demand is growing rapidly and significantly as energy, the key ingredient in all sectors of modern economy, has invaded the quality of life today due to our dependency on its abundant and uninterrupted supply. In particular, the increased levels of the green house gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), in the atmosphere is believed to be a major contributor to global warming and pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels used in various spheres of our life. A significant amount of heat energy is wasted by aluminum and steel industries. The recovery of these large amounts of wasted thermal energy will provide opportunity for improving overall energy efficiency in these energy-intensive industrial processes. Thermoelectric (TE) materials, which can generate electricity by recycling the heat wasted from industries using high temperature processes, could play an important role in global sustainable energy solution. Therefore, the long term vision of this project is to conduct fundamental and applied research on thermoelectric properties of nanostructured thin films of transition metals oxides (both n and p types) to find suitable nanomaterials for the conversion of electrical energy from heat wasted from industries, sun and human bodies. Sol-gel techniques will be mainly used to synthesize these transition metal oxides nanomaterials. An appropriate precursor will be chosen for the relevant oxide and appropriate salt will be used for the doping of the oxide. The newly synthesized nanomaterials will be characterized for electrical, structural and optical properties. A combination of n-type and p-type TE nanomaterials will be selected to develop a technology to generate electrical energy from industrial waste heat. The outcome of the scientific findings of this project is expected to help Canadian industries to develop economical, ecological and efficient materials in harvesting energy by recycling wasted energy.