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Updated: Mar 8, 2026

Asymmetric Thermoelectrochemical Cell for Harvesting Low-grade Heat under Isothermal Operation
Published on: February 5, 2020
Thermo-Magneto-Electric Generator Arrays for Active Heat Recovery System
Jinsung Chun1, Hyun-Cheol Song1, Min-Gyu Kang1
1Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and System (CEHMS), Bio-Inspired Materials and Devices Laboratory (BMDL), Virginia Tech, VA 24060, USA.
Abstract:
Continued emphasis on development of thermal cooling systems is being placed that can cycle low grade heat. Examples include solar powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and data storage servers. The power efficiency of solar module degrades at elevated temperature, thereby, necessitating the need for heat extraction system. Similarly, data centres in wireless computing system are facing increasing efficiency challenges due to high power consumption associated with managing the waste heat. We provide breakthrough in addressing these problems by developing thermo-magneto-electric generator (TMEG) arrays, composed of soft magnet and piezoelectric polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) cantilever. TMEG can serve dual role of extracting the waste heat and converting it into useable electricity. Near room temperature second-order magnetic phase transition in soft magnetic material, gadolinium, was employed to obtain mechanical vibrations on the PVDF cantilever under small thermal gradient. TMEGs were shown to achieve high vibration frequency at small temperature gradients, thereby, demonstrating effective heat transfer.
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