{"id":1053,"date":"2012-04-02T13:07:59","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T11:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2012-04-02T13:08:42","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T11:08:42","slug":"silicon-nanowires-new-age-efficency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/2012\/04\/02\/silicon-nanowires-new-age-efficency\/","title":{"rendered":"Silicon Nanowires &#8211; New Age Efficiency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Currently, millions of tons of fossils fuels are combusted to produce energy through converting thermal energy to electric energy or kinetic energy in an inefficient way. Fossil fuel engines run at approximately 40% efficiency, with the other 60% being lost to the environment. A recent discovery has been made by scientists at Stanford University in the application of silicon nanowires as producers of electricity. A current property of thermoelectric materials is the conduction of electricity when one end of the material is warmer than the opposite end, generating electricity. However, in most cases producing such a material is either very expensive or requires considerable costs to keep one end warmer than the other as since many materials that conduct electricity well also conduct heat well and so near equal temperature is established at both sides. The break through to this dilemma comes with the development of silicon nanowires. These tiny wires have the intriguing property of electrical conductivity but highly reduced thermal conductivity, allowing for significantly increased efficiency in thermoelectric applications. The idea is that the energy lost to the environment primarily to heat escaping, can be converted into electrical energy, increasing the efficiency of fossil fuel usage.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/spie.org\/Images\/Graphics\/Newsroom\/Imported\/1087\/1087_fig1.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/spie.org\/Images\/Graphics\/Newsroom\/Imported\/1087\/1087_fig1.jpg\">http:\/\/spie.org\/Images\/Graphics\/Newsroom\/Imported\/1087\/1087_fig1.jpg<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The applications for this discovery are far reaching, as it affects nearly all electronic products, any engine using fuel to evolve thermal energy, and even the efficiency of batteries. A further benefit of the application of this technology comes with the fact that the silicon industry is already well established and so integration of procedures to produce silicon on the nano scale for wiring can be done faster and in a more feasible fashion. In addition, silicon is not considered a rare material, like platinum or gold, but actually exists in a vast quantity in Earth\u2019s crust.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stsm.ir\/resources\/10302-16101387085210silicon%20nanowire%20thermoelectrics.pdf\">http:\/\/www.stsm.ir\/resources\/10302-16101387085210silicon%20nanowire%20thermoelectrics.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Currently, millions of tons of fossils fuels are combusted to produce energy through converting thermal energy to electric energy or kinetic energy in an inefficient way. Fossil fuel engines run at approximately 40% efficiency, with the other 60% being lost to the environment. A recent discovery has been made by scientists at Stanford University in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1056,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/1056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ruthtrumpold.id.au\/blogs\/designtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}