Thermoelectric systems are a green and sustainable way to harvest energy from any form of heat that otherwise would be wasted. At the core of this energy conversion process is the so-called Seebeck effect, which describes the voltage building up on a material exposed to a temperature difference.
However, despite more than 100 years of intense research, thermoelectric efficiencies are still lower than that of conventional heat engines, making thermoelectrics only suitable for niche applications.
That is why one of the main endeavors of scientists today is to find new strategies to improve this efficiency. Our latest article "Impact of spin-entropy on the thermoelectric properties of a 2D magnet," published in Nano Letters, demonstrates that a solution could lie in circuits based on two-dimensional (2D) magnetic layers.
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