Low-Tech Semiconductors Are About to Disrupt the Energy Industry
22nd April 2014
Over the next five years, as the energy industry searches for new viable pillars of emerging clean technologies to fuel ever-growing demand for energy and efficiency, a tidal wave of thermoelectric power generation products is poised to flood the market. Thermoelectrics are semiconductor materials that turn heat directly into electricity, much like solar panels use light to do the same. The materials can be used in anything from appliances, to engines, to power plants, and really anywhere that waste heat is produced.
Breakthroughs in nanotechnology have brought the commercial viability of thermoelectric waste-heat recovery to a tipping point. The future of thermoelectrics is no longer a ”might be” or “could be”, but a “will be.”