ELFT HÍRADÓ

[szpl <szpl AT metal.elte.hu>]

ELTE Fizikai Intézet

                                ORTVAY KOLLOKVIUM

                    2018. április 26., csütörtök, 15:00-kor
                Az ELTE Pázmány Péter s. 1/A alatti épületében
                           földszinti 0.81 előadóban


                                    Colin Lambert
                (Department of Physics, Lancaster University, UK)

            From nanoelectronics to single molecule energy harvesting


Kivonatos ismertetés:
This talk begins with an introduction to the field of single-molecule 
electronics, which harnesses expertise from physics and chemistry to design 
new ultra-thin-film materials and to realize circuit elements at the limit of 
miniaturization; this is a subfield of nanoelectronics in which the electronic 
components are single molecules. It then proceeds to an overview of how this 
expertise is being harnessed in the race to develop high-performance 
thermoelectric materials.

By 2025, the energy expended by U.S. IT infrastructure is predicted to reach 
one third of total U.S. consumption. This waste heat could be used to generate 
electricity economically, provided materials with a high thermoelectric 
efficiency could be identified. Generation of electricity from heat via the 
Seebeck effect is silent, environmentally friendly and requires no moving 
parts. Conversely, efficient Peltier cooling using such materials would have 
applications to on-chip cooling of CMOS-based devices. The demand for new 
thermoelectric materials has led to a world-wide race to develop materials 
with a high thermoelectric efficiency. At the level of fundamental science, it 
was demonstrated recently that molecular wires can mediate long-range 
phase-coherent tunnelling with remarkably low attenuation over distances of 
order 5 nm, even at room temperature. This creates the possibility of using 
quantum interference to engineer enhancement of thermoelectricity in molecular 
materials and suggests that nanometre-thin cross-plane architectures could be 
ideal for delivering high-efficiency thermoelectric materials and devices.