Furukawa Develops High Performance Thermoelectric Convert Material

Furukawa announced on Wednesday the firm developed high performance thermoelectric converter material. The material has world top performance in normal temperature to 600 degrees centigrade as skutterudite material containing ferrous, cobalt, antimony and rare earth. The firm keeps developing mass production process and better performance commercializing by 2010. Skutterudite material has high heat conductivity, which should be low for thermoelectric converter material. The firm succeeded to reduce the heat conductivity by adding lanthanum, barium, ytterbium and calcium along with aluminium, gallium, indium, titanium, zirconium and hafnium. The material has more than 2 times higher performance than existing materials. The firm made sample thermoelectric converter module with 50 by 50 by 8 millimeters. The firm reports the sample recorded 7% of thermoelectric converting and 33 watt of power output with 720 degree centigrade for the upper side and 50 degree for the downside.