Research report 2011 - Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics

Thermoelectric properties of porous silicon

Authors
De Boor, Johannes; Ao, Xianyu; Kim, Dong-Sik; Schmidt, Volker
Departments
Experimentelle Abteilung II (Peter Fratzl)
Summary
By nanostructuring silicon its thermal conductivity can be significantly reduced. Such a reduction can potentially induce a corresponding increase of the thermoelectric efficiency so that the transformation of heat into electric power could be improved. Therefore porous silicon layers were produced by electrochemical etching and the thermoelectric properties of the nanostructured material investigated. These investigations show that the thermal conductivity is indeed strongly reduced but that due to competing effects only moderate increases of the thermoelectric efficiency can be achieved.

For the full text, see the German version.

Go to Editor View