Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Direct Conversion from Heat to Electricity using Multiferroic materials

Hello future engineer,


Multiferroic materials are the materials that exhibit more than one ferroic properties, the ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties being the most popularly known.

Recently, research workers (working with Prof. Richard James) at the University of Minnesota, discovered a new multiferroic material that can convert heat to electricity directly. This has huge implications on generating electricity from waste sources of heat that could not otherwise be tapped. You can read the entire article here.


Just in case if you are not aware about how electricity is obtained from heat, I would like to point out that typically, the conversion of heat to electricity in commercial power plants is by way of mechanical work by a prime mover (like driving a turbine using steam, combustion products, or some other vapor). The prime mover is coupled to an electric generator that converts the mechanical work to electricity (or electrical energy to be more precise).