Energy Harvesting Nanomaterials: Synthesis, Characterizations and Applications

全球能源需求正在迅速大幅增长，因为能源是现代经济所有部门的关键组成部分，由于我们依赖其丰富和不间断的供应，它已经影响了今天的生活质量。特别地，大气中绿色家用气体二氧化碳（CO2）的增加的水平被认为是全球变暖和污染的主要原因，这是由于在我们生活的各个领域中使用的化石燃料的燃烧。铝和钢铁工业浪费了大量的热能。回收这些大量浪费的热能将为提高这些能源密集型工业过程的总体能源效率提供机会。热电（TE）材料可以通过回收使用高温过程的工业浪费的热量来发电，可以在全球可持续能源解决方案中发挥重要作用。因此，该项目的长期愿景是对过渡金属氧化物（n型和p型）纳米结构薄膜的热电性能进行基础和应用研究，以找到合适的纳米材料，用于将工业，太阳和人体浪费的热量转化为电能。溶胶-凝胶技术将主要用于合成这些过渡金属氧化物纳米材料。将为相关氧化物选择适当的前体，并且将使用适当的盐来掺杂氧化物。将对新合成的纳米材料的电学、结构和光学特性进行表征。将选择n型和p型TE纳米材料的组合来开发从工业废热中产生电能的技术。该项目的科学成果预计将帮助加拿大工业开发经济、生态和高效的材料，通过回收浪费的能源来收集能源。

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.