In a world of enormously rising energy consumption and environmental pollution, the demand for clean and renewable energy sources and for minimizing the energy loss is of critical importance. One strategy towards improved energy efficiency involves capturing and recycling the “waste” heat from energy conversion processes. With a special class of materials, known as thermoelectrics, generators can be devised, which allow a direct conversion of heat into electricity.

Still, currently available hybrid thermoelectric (TE) materials have serious limitations: 1) the dominantly physical interactions between the organic and inorganic phases reduce their long-term stability and greatly restrict the carrier transport in hybrid TE materials, 2) limited control of the distribution of the organic/inorganic phases at the nanoscale makes enhancement of phonon scattering in hybrid TE materials difficult. To advance these materials and overcome the challenges, the project aims at developing new organic-inorganic hybrid TE materials by applying a newly developed concept of simultaneous vapour phase coating and infiltration (VPI/SCIP) of polymers with inorganics. VPI/SCIP technique as a viable, scalable, and robust preparative strategy for obtaining novel high-performance hybrid TE materials with chemically linked organic/inorganic interfaces and control of composition of the hybrid/inorganic layer thickness on the atomic level. The goal of this work lies in creating a new hybrid material set, where hierarchical superlattice structures of different inorganic materials are simultaneously grown in the subsurface of a polymer and on its top, which will allow to obtain a superior TE performance. The materials will be fabricated and characterized with a variety of physicochemical techniques including electron microscopy, UV-Vis spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, XRD and others. The Master project is at the intersection of inorganic, physical, organic chemistry and physics and combines experimental work in a chemical laboratory with various state-of-the-art characterization methods. The work will be conducted in the Nanomaterials group at CIC nanoGUNE.

Application:

If you are a master student with interest for cutting edge research in hybrid materials, please contact Mato Knez (m.knez@nanogune.eu). 

To apply for a master scholarship fill in the form below and follow the instructions and recommendations of the general call open until 30 June 2021.