ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Suppression of thermal conductivity in nanostructured ZnO

Abstract: Thermoelectricity offers solutions for the low-carbon economy through the development of energy-efficient technology. Modest improvement in thermoelectric performance would allow, for example, waste heat in car exhausts to be converted into useful power, and hot spots on computer chips to be cooled using solid state refrigerators. However, most thermoelectric materials have complicated structures with scarce or harmful elements. Zinc oxide and its alloys are attractive candidates because of their simplicity, high thermal stability, corrosion resistance, non-toxicity and low cost. The electronic transport of zinc oxide is ideal for thermoelectric applications, but its thermal conductivity is too high. However, nanostructuring reduces the thermal conductivity by an order of magnitude. We aim to understand this phenomenon by measuring lattice vibrations using inelastic neutron scattering.

Principal Investigator: Professor Jon Goff
Experimenter: Mr Tim Lehner
Local Contact: Dr Duc Le
Experimenter: Dr David Voneshen
Experimenter: Dr Rob Potter
Experimenter: Dr Keith Refson
Experimenter: Mr Chris Nuttall

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1520210

ISIS Experiment Number: RB1520210

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Professor Jon Goff et al; (2015): Suppression of thermal conductivity in nanostructured ZnO, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1520210

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.