SYDNEY, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- Scientists in Australia have developed a new material that achieves record-high thermoelectric performance, paving the way for more efficient conversion of waste heat into clean electricity.
The study found that adding manganese to silver copper telluride made it the most efficient material of its kind, according to a statement released Thursday by Australia's Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
The research team enabled a prototype device to deliver more than 13 percent conversion efficiency, putting it alongside the best current technologies, said QUT researcher Nan-Hai Li, also from the Australian Research Council Research Hub in Zero-emission Power Generation for Carbon Neutrality.
The tiny change to the material resulted in a product far better at converting heat into electricity, said Li, the first author of the study published in Energy & Environmental Science under Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry.
The 13 percent conversion efficiency means that for every 100 units of heat energy put into the device, about 13 units are converted into electricity, said QUT Professor Zhi-Gang Chen who co-led the research.
"That might not sound like much, but it is a very high number for thermoelectric materials, with most of them only managing a conversion efficiency of a few percent," Chen said.
"Every day, huge amounts of heat from cars, factories and power stations simply vanish into the air. This material gives us a way to capture some of that lost energy and turn it into clean power," he said. ■
