Happy New Year! Before they left on vacation, our award-winning research staff was tasked to come up with an under-the-radar technology that will reshape our lives this year. They have risen to the challenge and informed me of the breath-taking possibilities behind thin-film nano technologies when used to generate electric power from circuit board waste heat.
As reported in a paper by Simha Sethumadhavan and Doug Burger, computer scientists at the University of Texas, thermo-electric generators or TEG have been around since the 1950s. Physicists have known that heat-differentials in metals can cause electrons to migrate thus creating a voltage difference. In other words, a hot metal plate effectively becomes a battery.
As a practical matter, the efficiencies of TEG were too low to power devices. That is until new thin-film materials were explored. Thin-film and self-assembled nano-wires have excellent conversion ratios. TEG technology has recently been embedded into silicon ships to power a refrigeration module.
Besides air-conditioning CPUs, Sethumadhavan and Doug Burger mention broader applications of TEG, including “a cat shaver, a cat petter or even a robotic cat companion.”
Hat tip and grin to Webtorials for posting this important paper.