ELECTRO-TEG - Electrodeposition of thermoelectric materials to produce novel thermoelectric generator devices

材料的进步(特别是在纳米结构方面)在过去5年中使热电性能发生了阶段性的变化，这导致了一些水热能回收技术在汽车行业中商业化。因此，市场吸引力增加，这些TIG的市场正在大幅增长。然而，由于劳动密集型材料整合、加工和手工组装导致的大规模制造成本相对较高，阻碍了广泛的商业化。因此，很明显，除非开发出生产热电材料的具有成本效益的制造技术并将其集成到高效装置中，否则大规模生产将出口到低成本经济体。ELECTROTEG将通过开发一种低温热电沉积工艺来解决这些限制，该工艺将使商业现场制造完全致密的纳米结构热电材料成为可能，从而消除材料固结、机械加工和手工组装的需要。

Material advances (in particular in nano-structuring) have produced a step change in the thermoelectric performance over the last 5 years which has led to some wate heat energy recovery technoloiges being commercialised within the autmotive sector. As a result, there is increased market pull and the market for these TEGs is growing considerably. However, the relatively high cost of large-scale manufacture due to labour intensive material consolidation, machining and hand assembly is hampering widespread commercialisation. It is therefore becoming clear that unless cost-effective manufacturing technologies for the production of the thermo-electric material and their integration into efficient devices are developed then mass production will be exported to low-cost economies. ELECTROTEG will address these limitations through the development of a low temperature thermoelectric electro-deposition process that will enable the commercial manufacture of fully dense nano-structured thermo-electric materials in-situ, eliminating the need for material consolidation, machining and hand assembly.