Imagine a computer so efficient that it can recycle its own waste heat to produce electricity. While such an idea may seem far-fetched today, significant progress has already been made to realize these devices. Researchers at the Nanostructured Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Utah have fabricated spintronics-based thin film devices which do just that, i.e. convert even minute waste heat into useful electricity. “As electronic devices enter the nano-size regime, the problem of heat generation is becoming more and more severe,” says University of Utah Materials Scientist Ashutosh Tiwari, who led the research published online Friday, March 21 in the Nature publishing group’s journal “Scientific Reports”. “Our spintronic-based thermoelectric devices work at room temperature and don’t require the continuous application of an external magnetic field,” Tiwari says. “Most of the spintronic thermoelectric devices in earlier studies required the continuous application of a magnetic field to keep the device magnetized.” “Spintronics is a new branch of electronics which utilizes both the charge as well as the spin of electrons,” says Tiwari. “Tiwari conducted the research with graduate students Gene Siegel, Megan Campbell Prestgard, and Shiang Teng. The study was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Condensed Matter Physics
The post Spintronic Thermoelectric Power Generators has been published on Technology Org.
#materials
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'
No comments:
Post a Comment