Harnessing Electricity's Lost Heat

Energy now lost as heat during the generation of electricity could be harnessed by silicon nanowires synthesized using a technique developed by researchers at the U.S. Dept. of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (www.lbl.gov) and the Univ. of California (UC) at Berkeley. Potential applications of the technology range from DOE's hydrogen fuel-cell-powered Freedom CAR to personal power-jackets that could use heat from the body to recharge cell phones and other electronic devices.

"We've shown that it's possible to achieve a large enhancement of thermoelectric energy efficiency at room temperature in rough silicon nanowires that have been processed by wafer-scale …