2026 roadmap toward sustainable thermoelectrics
| Title: | 2026 roadmap toward sustainable thermoelectrics |
|---|---|
| Authors: | Jan-Willem G Bos; Trupti Mohanty; Taylor D Sparks; Wenjie Xie; Anke Weidenkaff; Salvatore Grasso; Ruizhi Zhang; Michael J Reece; Teng Wang; Jae Sung Son; Samina Akbar; Iris Nandhakumar; Richard Tuley; Cevriye Koz; Ran He; Pingjun Ying; Amin Bahrami; Vicente Pacheco; Kornelius Nielsch; Ricardo Grau-Crespo; Luis M Antunes; Keith T Butler; Neophytos Neophytou; Rajeev Dutt; Bhawna Sahni; Nagendra Singh Chauhan; Takao Mori; M Parzer; F Garmroudi; A Riss; E Bauer; Chongyang Zeng; Emiliano Bilotti; Chang You; Oliver Fenwick; Paz Vaqueiro; Emmanuel Guilmeau; Animesh Das; Kanishka Biswas; Yu Liu; Chenguang Fu; Tiejun Zhu; Gerda Rogl; Peter Rogl; Panagiotis Mangelis; Theodora Kyratsi; Ryoji Funahashi |
| Source: | JPhys Energy, Vol 8, Iss 1, p 011502 (2026) |
| Publisher Information: | IOP Publishing |
| Publication Year: | 2026 |
| Collection: | Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
| Subject Terms: | sustainable; thermoelectrics; thermoelectric materials; sustainable materials; Production of electric energy or power. Powerplants. Central stations; TK1001-1841; Renewable energy sources; TJ807-830 |
| Description: | Thermoelectric (TE) technology uses the Seebeck effect to directly convert heat into electricity or vice versa. Amongst its advantages are the lack of moving parts, reliability, absence of refrigerant gasses and scalability. To date, commercial progress has been limited due to relatively low conversion efficiencies and high costs. However, with increasing energy costs, the advent of the Internet of Things and its needs to power many sensors, and the need for thermal management in electronics, there is plenty of reason to be optimistic about the future of TE energy conversion. Beyond using abundant elements, sustainability has so far not been a major consideration in the development of TE technology, with its understandable emphasis on improving performance. However, sustainability aspects, including eco-friendly processing, resource efficient module fabrication, ensuring a long working life and end of life recycling should all be major considerations from the outset. This roadmap aims to provide an overview of current efforts moving towards sustainable TEs as well as guidance for future work. In terms of organization, the roadmap contains cross-cutting sections on aspects of sustainability and sections focused on the major TE materials. It can be read front to back or focusing on chapters of particular interest. We hope that this roadmap will stimulate new research, leading to the early adoption of sustainability concepts, beyond using abundant elements, in the development of large-scale TE technology. |
| Document Type: | article in journal/newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Relation: | https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7655/ae2d98; https://doaj.org/toc/2515-7655; https://doaj.org/article/155c07f92075436e866c585d1501d691 |
| DOI: | 10.1088/2515-7655/ae2d98 |
| Availability: | https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7655/ae2d98; https://doaj.org/article/155c07f92075436e866c585d1501d691 |
| Accession Number: | edsbas.AFF424D6 |
| Database: | BASE |