With a projection of nearly doubling up the world population by 2050, we need wide variety of renewable and clean energy sources to meet the increased energy demand. Solar energy is considered as the leading promising alternate energy source with the pertinent challenge of off sunshine period and uneven worldwide distribution of usable sun light. Although thermoelectricity is considered as a reasonable renewable energy from wasted heat, its mass scale usage is yet to be developed. Here we show, large scale integration of nano-manufactured pellets of thermoelectric nano-materials, embedded into window glasses to generate thermoelectricity using the temperature difference between hot outside and cool inside. For the first time, this work offers an opportunity to potentially generate 304 watts of usable power from 9 m2 window at a 20°C temperature gradient. If a natural temperature gradient exists, this can serve as a sustainable energy source for green building technology.

We report the preparation of nanoscale bismuth antimony telluride and bismuth telluride particles, that are hot pressed to make thermopiles and then inserted into window glass to transform it into a thermoelectric window for power generation. This serves to demonstrate that at a given temperature difference (essentially the temperature difference between the outdoors and inside the room) substantial, clean thermoelectricity is generated. In the early 1800s, Seebeck discovered that if two dissimilar materials are coupled together with two junctions subjected to different temperatures (T Hot and T Cold ), an electric potential difference (DV) is created across the junction that is proportional to the temperature difference (DT = T Hot ÀT Cold ). The temperature gradient causes the majority carriers to move away from the hot junction towards the cold junction, which results in a net flow of current through the device upon the application of an appropriate load. As a result, thermoelectric (TE) materials can convert thermal energy into electrical energy, making them ideal candidates for renewable energy applications using abundant reservoirs of otherwise wasted heat.Thermoelectric generators with quiet, highly stable, stationary operation are one of the most explored areas of research in the renewable energy sector. We demonstrate a large-scale 132.25 cm 2 plexiglas [poly(methyl methacrylate)] panel embedded with 72 pairs of complementary thermoelectric nanomaterials (Bi 0.4 Sb 1.6 Te 3 and Bi 1.75 Te 3.25 ) as thermopiles to show both its promise as a thermoelectric window and to systematically study and discuss the technical challenges to be overcome to make this technology substantially efficient. We have also used finite element modeling (FEM), a widely known system-level behavior analysis tool, to predict and analyze the various factors contributing to the performance of our system. Although the output from the model is an order of magnitude lower than its experimental counterpart due to the limitations in the software, the model successfully validated the concept.Modeling thermal transfer or heat exchange in systems is challenging due to the complexity of the governing heat exchange equations. [1,2] FEM is a highly capable tool for simultaneously incorporating and solving the electrical and heat equations, leading to a close approximation of the real-world problem. Analytical modeling of thermoelectric systems poses a stiff challenge due to its inability to solve the electrical and thermal partial differential equations (PDEs) that govern these systems. The inadequacy is further compounded by the complex boundary conditions arising due to the physical shape of these systems. Various conditions render nonlinearity to certain parameters, making them difficult solve by using conventional analytical methods. FEM accounts well for such nonlinearity to converge to a solution for TE systems. [1] A two-pillar device is simulated for a temperature gradient that replicates the difference between the solar-heated outdoors...

We present a novel semiconducting alloy, silicon-tin (SiSn), as channel material for complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuit applications. The material has been studied theoretically using first principles analysis as well as experimentally by fabricating MOSFETs. Our study suggests that the alloy offers interesting possibilities in the realm of silicon band gap tuning. We have explored diffusion of tin (Sn) into the industry's most widely used substrate, silicon (100), as it is the most cost effective, scalable and CMOS compatible way of obtaining SiSn. Our theoretical model predicts a higher mobility for p-channel SiSn MOSFETs, due to a lower effective mass of the holes, which has been experimentally validated using the fabricated MOSFETs. We report an increase of 13.6% in the average field effect hole mobility for SiSn devices compared to silicon control devices. V C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.

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