Silicon Nanowire Thermoelectrics

Silicon has long been the material of choice in the electronics industry due to its tunable electrical properties and abundance in nature. Backed by a multi-billion dollar industry, Silicon Technology is scalable, cheap and mature. On the other hand, with 90% of the world’s power generated by heat engines operating at 30-40% efficiency on conventional fossil fuels, about 15 Terawatts of energy is lost to the environment [1]. Our objective in this project is to exploit the vast expertise of knowledge about Silicon and prove the capability of this unique material in energy harvesting. Efficiency of thermoelectric modules depends on a factor called the figure of merit (ZT) of the material components, which is a function of the Seebeck coefficient, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and absolute temperature [1]. ZT = SσT/(klattice+kelectronic)