Caged clathrates are crystals that have many tiny cage structures and can "shut" individual atoms in. These atoms can significantly alter the material properties of the crystal. According to the report of the Physicist Organization Network on September 22, scientists at the Technical University of Vienna, Austria, have created a new type of material with extremely strong thermoelectric properties by trapping helium atoms in clathrates, which can be used to convert waste heat into Electric energy.
When an industrial machine gets hot during operation, it loses a lot of heat and causes an unnecessary rise in ambient temperature. These wasted heat energy can be partially utilized by thermoelectric materials: Thermoelectric materials can create a current by bridging a hot object with a cold object. The research team of the Vienna University of Technology adopted a complex method of crystal growth. Using a mirror crystal furnace, a single helium atom was “closed†into a “cage†made of cesium, silicon and gold, resulting in a new type of Clathrate inclusions. They found that trapped helium atoms constantly hit the "cage", and this seems to give the new material excellent thermoelectric properties.
The team used this clathrate compound to connect hot objects with cold objects and tested its thermoelectric properties. "The thermal motion of electrons in materials depends on the temperature," explains Silk Bühler Pasching, a professor at the Vienna University of Technology. "The heat on the high temperature side is higher than on the low temperature side, so the electrons will The low-temperature region diffuses, thereby generating voltages on both sides of the thermoelectric material.†Experimental results show that germanium atoms increase the thermoelectric potential of the material by 50%, which means that higher voltages can be obtained. In addition, the thermal conductivity of this clathrate compound is very low, which is also a very important feature because the voltage cannot be maintained once the temperature difference does not exist.
Buhler Pasching believes that the good thermoelectric properties exhibited by the new material appear to be related to the so-called Condon effect (the phenomenon that the electrons are forced to change their spins when they are trapped around the magnetic impurities of the semiconductor material). There is a quantum mechanical correlation with atoms in the crystal. In fact, the Condor effect is known to result from cryogenic physics near absolute zero, but surprisingly, the quantum mechanics correlation plays an important role in this novel clathrate compound, and the temperature is even higher. A few hundred degrees Celsius. Bühler Pasching said that this is the highest temperature of the Condor effect they have observed in the world.
The research team is currently preparing to try different types of clathrates to achieve the same effect. They want to replace expensive gold with other metals such as copper to make the material more commercial. However, germanium can also be replaced by a cheaper mixture of multiple rare earth elements. The clathrates thus designed are expected to be used to convert industrial waste heat into valuable electrical energy.
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