Combination of large nanostructures and complex band structure for high performance thermoelectric lead telluride

The complexity of the valence band structure in p-type PbTe has been shown to enable a significant enhancement of the average thermoelectric figure of merit (zT) when heavily doped with Na. It has also been shown that when PbTe is nanostructured with large nanometer sized Ag_2Te precipitates there is an enhancement of zT due to phonon scattering at the interfaces. The enhancement in zT resulting from these two mechanisms is of similar magnitude but, in principle, decoupled from one another. This work experimentally demonstrates a successful combination of the complexity in the valence band structure with the addition of nanostructuring to create a high performance thermoelectric material. These effects lead to a high zT over a wide temperature range with peak zT > 1.5 at T > 650 K in Na-doped PbTe/Ag_2Te. This high average zT produces 30% higher efficiency (300–750 K) than pure Na-doped PbTe because of the nanostructures, while the complex valence band structure leads to twice the efficiency as the related n-type La-doped PbTe/Ag_2Te without such band structure complexity

Microstructure Control and Iodine Doping of Bismuth Telluride

On the materials scale, thermoelectric efficiency is defined by the dimensionless figure of merit zT. This value is made up of three material components in the form zT = T&#945;2/&#961;&#954;, where &#945; is the Seebeck coefficient, &#961; is the electrical resistivity, and &#954; is the total thermal conductivity. Therefore, in order to improve zT would require the reduction of &#954; and &#961; while increasing &#945;. However due to the inter-relation of the electrical and thermal properties of materials, typical routes to thermoelectric enhancement come in one of two forms. The first is to isolate the electronic properties and increase &#945; without negatively affecting &#961;. Techniques like electron filtering, quantum confinement, and density of states distortions have been proposed to enhance the Seebeck coefficient in thermoelectric materials. However, it has been difficult to prove the efficacy of these techniques. More recently efforts to manipulate the band degeneracy in semiconductors has been explored as a means to enhance &#945;. The other route to thermoelectric enhancement is through minimizing the thermal conductivity, &#954;. More specifically, thermal conductivity can be broken into two parts, an electronic and lattice term, &#954;e and &#954;l respectively. From a functional materials standpoint, the reduction in lattice thermal conductivity should have a minimal effect on the electronic properties. Most routes incorporate techniques that focus on the reduction of the lattice thermal conductivity. The components that make up &#954;l (&#954;l = 1/3C&#957;l) are the heat capacity (C), phonon group velocity (&#957;), and phonon mean free path (l). Since the difficulty is extreme in altering the heat capacity and group velocity, the phonon mean free path is most often the source of reduction. Past routes to decreasing the phonon mean free path has been by alloying and grain size reduction. However, in these techniques the electron mobility is often negatively affected because in alloying any perturbation to the periodic potential can cause additional adverse carrier scattering. Grain size reduction has been another successful route to enhancing zT because of the significant difference in electron and phonon mean free paths. However, grain size reduction is erratic in anisotropic materials due to the orientation dependent transport properties. However, microstructure formation in both equilibrium and nonequilibrium processing routines can be used to effectively reduce the phonon mean free path as a route to enhance the figure of merit. This work starts with a discussion of several different deliberate microstructure varieties. Control of the morphology and finally structure size and spacing is discussed at length. Since the material example used throughout this thesis is anisotropic a short primer on zone melting is presented as an effective route to growing homogeneous and oriented polycrystalline material. The resulting microstructure formation and control is presented specifically in the case of In2Te3-Bi2Te3 composites and the transport properties pertinent to thermoelectric materials is presented. Finally, the transport and discussion of iodine doped Bi2Te3 is presented as a re-evaluation of the literature data and what is known today.</p

Improved Thermoelectric Cooling Based on the Thomson Effect

Traditional thermoelectric cooling relies on the Peltier effect which produces a temperature drop limited by the figure of merit, zT. This cooling limit is not required from classical thermodynamics but can be traced to problems of thermoelectric compatibility. Alternatively, if a thermoelectric cooler can be designed to achieve full thermoelectric compatibility, lower temperature can be achieved even if the zT is low. In such a device the Thomson effect plays an important role. We present the theoretical concept of a “Thomson cooler,” for cryogenic cooling which is designed to maintain thermoelectric compatibility and we derive the requirements for the Seebeck coefficient

rPinecone : Define sub-lineages of a clonal expansion via a phylogenetic tree

The ability to distinguish different circulating pathogen clones from each other is a fundamental requirement to understand the epidemiology of infectious diseases. Phylogenetic analysis of genomic data can provide a powerful platform to identify lineages within bacterial populations, and thus inform outbreak investigation and transmission dynamics. However, resolving differences between pathogens associated with low-variant (LV) populations carrying low median pairwise single nucleotide variant (SNV) distances remains a major challenge. Here we present rPinecone, an R package designed to define sub-lineages within closely related LV populations. rPinecone uses a root-to-tip directional approach to define sub-lineages within a phylogenetic tree according to SNV distance from the ancestral node. The utility of this software was demonstrated using both simulated outbreaks and real genomic data of two LV populations: a hospital outbreak of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and endemic Salmonella Typhi from rural Cambodia. rPinecone identified the transmission branches of the hospital outbreak and geographically confined lineages in Cambodia. Sub-lineages identified by rPinecone in both analyses were phylogenetically robust. It is anticipated that rPinecone can be used to discriminate between lineages of bacteria from LV populations where other methods fail, enabling a deeper understanding of infectious disease epidemiology for public health purposes.Peer reviewe

A comprehensive and high-quality collection of Escherichia coli genomes and their genes

Escherichia coli is a highly diverse organism that includes a range of commensal and pathogenic variants found across a range of niches and worldwide. In addition to causing severe intestinal and extraintestinal disease, E. coli is considered a priority pathogen due to high levels of observed drug resistance. The diversity in the E. coli population is driven by high genome plasticity and a very large gene pool. All these have made E. coli one of the most well- studied organisms, as well as a commonly used laboratory strain. Today, there are thousands of sequenced E. coli genomes stored in public databases. While data is widely available, accessing the information in order to perform analyses can still be a challenge. Collecting relevant available data requires accessing different sources, where data may be stored in a range of formats, and often requires further manipulation and processing to apply various analyses and extract useful information. In this study, we collated and intensely curated a collection of over 10 000 E. coli and Shigella genomes to provide a single, uniform, high- quality dataset. Shigella were included as they are considered specialized pathovars of E. coli. We provide these data in a number of easily accessible formats that can be used as the foundation for future studies addressing the biological differences between E. coli lineages and the distribution and flow of genes in the E. coli population at a high resolution. The analysis we present emphasizes our lack of understanding of the true diversity of the E. coli species, and the biased nature of our current understanding of the genetic diversity of such a key pathogen.Peer reviewe

Alloying to increase the band gap for improving thermoelectric properties of Ag_(2)Te

Ag_(2)Te simultaneously shows high mobility and low thermal conductivity, however the relatively low band gap of ~0.2 eV prevents it from achieving high thermoelectric figure of merit, zT, in the high temperature phase. In this study, the band gap of Ag_(2)Te has been increased enabling a zT of unity by forming alloys and composites with PbTe, thereby demonstrating the importance of exploiting potentially good thermoelectrics among these small band gap semiconductors and similar materials

High thermoelectric performance in (Bi_(0.25)Sb_(0.75)_2 Te_3 due to band convergence and improved by carrier concentration control

Bi_2Te_3 has been recognized as an important cooling material for thermoelectric applications. Yet its thermoelectric performance could still be improved. Here we propose a band engineering strategy by optimizing the converging valence bands of Bi_2Te_3 and Sb_2Te_3 in the (Bi_(1−x)Sb_x)_2Te_3 system when x = 0.75. Band convergence successfully explains the sharp increase in density-of-states effective mass yet relatively constant mobility and optical band gap measurement. This band convergence picture guides the carrier concentration tuning for optimum thermoelectric performance. To synthesize homogeneous textured and optimally doped (Bi0.25Sb0.75)2Te3, excess Te was chosen as the dopant. Uniform control of the optimized thermoelectric composition was achieved by zone-melting which utilizes separate solidus and liquidus compositions to obtain zT = 1.05 (at 300 K) without nanostructuring

Genomic and Phenotypic Analyses of Acinetobacter baumannii Isolates From Three Tertiary Care Hospitals in Thailand.

Antibiotic resistant strains of Acinetobacter baumannii are responsible for a large and increasing burden of nosocomial infections in Thailand and other countries of Southeast Asia. New approaches to their control and treatment are urgently needed and an attractive strategy is to remove the bacterial polysaccharide capsule, and thus the protection from the host's immune system. To examine phylogenetic relationships, distribution of capsule chemotypes, acquired antibiotic resistance determinants, susceptibility to complement and other traits associated with systemic infection, we sequenced 191 isolates from three tertiary referral hospitals in Thailand and used phenotypic assays to characterize key aspects of infectivity. Several distinct lineages were circulating in three hospitals and the majority belonged to global clonal group 2 (GC2). Very high levels of resistance to carbapenems and other front-line antibiotics were found, as were a number of widespread plasmid replicons. A high diversity of capsule genotypes was encountered, with only three of these (KL6, KL10, and KL47) showing more than 10% frequency. Almost 90% of GC2 isolates belonged to the most common capsule genotypes and were fully resistant to the bactericidal action of human serum complement, most likely protected by their polysaccharide capsule, which represents a key determinant of virulence for systemic infection. Our study further highlights the importance to develop therapeutic strategies to remove the polysaccharide capsule from extensively drug-resistant A. baumanii during the course of systemic infection

Improved Thermoelectric Cooling Based on the Thomson Effect

Traditional thermoelectric cooling relies on the Peltier effect which produces a temperature drop limited by the figure of merit, zT. This cooling limit is not required from classical thermodynamics but can be traced to problems of thermoelectric compatibility. Alternatively, if a thermoelectric cooler can be designed to achieve full thermoelectric compatibility, lower temperature can be achieved even if the zT is low. In such a device the Thomson effect plays an important role. We present the theoretical concept of a “Thomson cooler,” for cryogenic cooling which is designed to maintain thermoelectric compatibility and we derive the requirements for the Seebeck coefficient

Enhanced thermoelectric performance in the very low thermal conductivity Ag_2Se_(0.5)Te_(0.5)

In this letter, we report the high-temperature thermoelectric properties of Ag_2Se_(0.5)Te_(0.5). We find that this particular composition displays very low thermal conductivity and competitive thermoelectric performance. Specifically, in the temperature region 520 K ≤ T ≤ 620 K, we observe non-hysteretic behavior between the heating and cooling curves and zT values ranging from 1.2 to 0.8. Higher zT values are observed at lower temperatures on cooling. Our results suggest that this alloy is conducive to high thermoelectric performance in the intermediate temperature range, and thus deserves further investigation