A pinch of titanium made a waste-heat film 250 times better at making electricity

Every engine, factory and laptop throws away heat. Thermoelectric materials can turn some of that heat back into electricity, but the good ones usually need high-temperature manufacturing that many devices can't survive. Researchers at Tohoku University in Japan have found a shortcut: adding a small amount of titanium to thin films of chromium nitride boosted the material's power factor — its ability to generate power from a temperature difference — some 250-fold, without high-temperature processing. The work, published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, works by carefully controlling defects in the film. 'This approach could help expand the applications of thermoelectric materials and recover energy that would otherwise be lost as heat,' said assistant professor Yi Shuang.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation