AN INSIGHT IN THE THERMOELECTRIC DEVICES AND APPLICATIONS BASED ON THE SEEBECK AND PELTIER EFFECTS

The fundamentals of the basic thermoelectric phenomena are briefly presented by emphasizing the role of the Seebeck effect as an electricity generator that consumes the heat injected at the hot junction in a system containing a thermal gradient as well as the role of the Peltier effect as a heat pump that consumes electricity to create a thermal gradient in an entropic system of uniform temperature. The role of a high figure of merit ZT of the thermoelectric materials for obtaining a high energy conversion is discussed both for the thermoelectric generators as well as for the refrigeration devices. A number of accomplished thermoelectric devices are presented such as: thermoelectric devices that provided electricity for the space vehicles (Apollo lunar missions, Viking Mars landers, outer-planet spacecrafts Voyager, Ulysses, Galileo, Cassini), nano-refrigeration thermoelectric devices fabricated by thin-film technology that are embedded in integrated circuits in microprocessors, plant-wide scale thermoelectric devices for harvesting electricity from waste heat in nuclear plants or in automotive vehicles.