Achievement

RPI IGERT trainee Eduardi Castillo (Mechanical engineering) published two peer review papers and had six conference presentations as either the first author or a co-author at Annual Electronic Materials Conference and Exhibition and Material Research Society. The thermoelectric energy conversion efficiency of a material is determined by the figure of merit ZT with higher value desirable. Eduardi develops a thermoelectric characterization strategy using the transient Harman method under nonideal contact and boundary conditions. He also presents a thermoelectric transport model that accounts for the effects of thermal and electrical contact resistances and heat transport through electrodes and supporting substrate. He has derived analytical expressions for the temperature difference across the thermoelectric sample that aid in the separate determination of the Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity, and electrical resistivity of the sample and to quantify the parasitic effects.