Researchers at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have demonstrated that carbon nanotubes have the potential to act as a thermoelectric power generator that captures and uses waste heat. NREL believes the research could help guide manufacturing of thermoelectric devices based on either single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) films or carbon nanotube composites.
“There have not been many examples where people have really looked at the intrinsic thermoelectric properties of carbon nanotubes and that’s what we feel this paper does,” said Andrew Ferguson, a research scientist in NREL’s Chemical and Materials Science Center and co-lead author of the paper with Jeffrey Blackburn.
As NREL explains, carbon nanotubes perform better than inorganic materials, which have caused problems for nanomaterial researchers in the past due to their high weight and low flexibility. They add that metallic nanotubes actually can do harm to thermoelectric generator, whereas carbon nanotubes actually enhance its performance.
