Tisdale Lab @ MIT

The Tisdale Lab was awarded $150,000 in seed funding from the MIT Energy Initiative for our proposal “Quantum Confined Materials for Thermoelectrics”. From the MIT News website:

“Thermoelectric devices can convert waste heat from car engines, power plants, and other sources directly into electricity. The best thermoelectric materials incorporate performance-enhancing nanoscale features, but fabricating them generally requires expensive methods not cost-effective at scale. As an alternative, Assistant Professor William Tisdale of chemical engineering is evaluating the thermoelectric performance capabilities of colloidal quantum dots (QDs), nanoscale semiconductor crystals whose electronic structure and behavior are defined by particle size and shape. By using novel laboratory techniques to synthesize QD materials, Tisdale will examine how surface chemistry and crystal packing affect charge and heat transport in colloidal QD materials—an understanding that will make possible enhanced thermoelectric performance and the optimization of inexpensive solution-based processes for fabrication of large-area energy conversion devices.”