Subject: M. Ehmke 4/5/12 Ph.D. Prelim Exam Seminar Notification
From: "Stacey, Lisa A" <[email-masked]>
To: "[email-masked]'" <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]'" <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]'" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:04:31 -0400

MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
SEMINAR

Microstructure Effects on the Properties of Layered rare-earth
doped p-type Bi2Sr2Co2Oy Oxide Thermoelectrics

by

Matthias Ehmke
Ph.D. Prelim Exam Part 1
Prof. K. Bowman

ABSTRACT

With a growing world population, new technologies and globalization, humankind is facing a strong increase in energy demand.  A growing energy demand is also associated with larger greenhouse gas emissions, such as CO2 emissions.  One approach is to harvest the large amount of unused waste heat in home heating, car exhaust, and industrial processes to produce electricity with the use of thermoelectric devices.  Current thermoelectric applications are limited to small size devices such as car heaters and coolers, portable picnic coolers, laser diode coolers, and radioisotope thermoelectric generators.  Those applications, however, only represent niche products.  In order to revolutionize applications such as energy generation from waste heat on a larger scale, thermoelectric materials are required that endure thermal and chemical conditions present in such environments and also exhibit a significantly increased efficiency.  Semiconducting metal oxides, such as the layered cobalt oxide Bi2Sr2Co2Oy, are quite promising for this purpose, because they exhibit a high thermal stability, high chemical resistance, are generally non-toxic and at the same time can deliberately be designed to show high thermoelectric performance. An overview over the concepts and performance of layered cobalt oxide thermoelectrics is given and the systematic investigation of the microstructure property relationship for different doping conditions and processing techniques is proposed.

Date:   Thursday, April 5, 2012

Time:        1:30 P.M.
Place:   ARMS 1028

PURDUE MSE

Lisa Stacey
Secretary/Development Assistant
Purdue University
School of Matierals Engineering
765/494-4100