More Heat Than Light – But Energetic, Nevertheless

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Mars Curiosity Rover is bigger than one would expect, over six feet tall and weighing 1,982 pounds. It travels up to 660 feet per day on its multiple wheels, looking for rocks to analyze with its ChemCam. Powered by the heat from its plutonium reactor, Curiosity will rove Mars for two years if all goes well. The heat is converted to electricity (which then drives the wheel motors on the rover) by a lead telluride thermoelectric material, a semiconductor which, capable as it is, has been eclipsed in efficiency by a new form of the material developed by Northwestern University researchers. Mercouri G. Kanatzidis, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, explains that his heat exchange material is twice as efficient as that used on Curiosity, a breakthrough with potential uses to boost car mileage, improve industrial processes, and maybe even make hybrid aircraft more efficient. Currently used materials have …