QUANTUM WELL THERMOELECTRICS FOR CONVERTING WASTE HEAT TO ELECTRICITY

New thermoelectric materials using Quantum Well (QW) technology are expected to increase the energy conversion efficiency to more than 25% from the present 5%, which will allow for the low cost conversion of waste heat into electricity. Hi-Z Technology, Inc. has been developing QW technology over the past six years. It will use Caterpillar, Inc., a leader in the manufacture of large scale industrial equipment, for verification and life testing of the QW films and modules. Other members of the team are Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who will sputter large area QW films. The Scope of Work is to develop QW materials from their present proof-of-principle technology status to a pre-production level over a proposed three year period. This work will entail fabricating the QW films through a sputtering process of 50 {micro}m thick multi layered films and depositing them on 12 inch diameter, 5 {micro}m thick Si substrates. The goal in this project is to produce the technology for fabricating a basic 10-20 watt module that can be used to build up any size generator such as: a 5-10 kW Auxiliary Power Unit (APU), a multi kW Waste Heat Recovery Generator (WHRG) for a class 8 truck or as small as a 10-20 watt unit that would fit on a daily used wood fired stove and allow some of the estimated 2-3 billion people on earth, who have no electricity, to recharge batteries (such as a cell phone) or directly power radios, TVs, computers and other low powered devices. In this quarter Hi-Z has continued fabrication of the QW films and also continued development of joining techniques for fabricating the N and P legs into a couple. The upper operating temperature limit for these films is unknown and will be determined via the isothermal aging studies that are in progress. We are reporting on these studies in this report. The properties of the QW films that are being evaluated are Seebeck, thermal conductivity and thermal-to-electricity conversion efficiency