Event Details

In this talk I will review some of our recent and current work, with a focus on thermoelectric materials, and in particular the understanding of these materials that can be obtained from NMR studies. In recent years there has been a concerted effort to develop new thermoelectric materials systems in an effort toward improved energy recovery and efficiency, as well as for microelectronic and related applications. Among the requirements are semiconducting solids with low lattice thermal conductivity, and high electron mobility. In this process there have been a number of recent developments in understanding such materials including phonon interactions and anharmonic vibrational properties. In my lab we use several experimental techniques to analyze such materials, with NMR as a primary tool providing a local probe of electronic and vibrational properties. I will discuss how we use these techniques to analyze such behavior, and focus on some recent results in Ba8Ga16Sn30, a clathrate semiconductor, and in Cu2-xSe and related materials, a superionic conductor system.