Noninvasive and Continuous Monitoring of the Core Body Temperature through the Quantitative Measurement of Blood Perfusion Rate.

Core body temperature (CBT) is one of the four vital signs that must be monitored continuously. The continuous recording of CBT is possible through invasive methods by inserting a temperature probe into specific body sites. We report a novel method to monitor CBT through the quantitative measurement of skin blood perfusion rate (ω).

Synergetic enhancement of thermoelectric performances by localized carrier and phonon scattering in CuSe with incorporated fullerene nanoparticles.

C/CuSe thermoelectric nanocomposites were synthesized with various amounts of fullerene (C; 0.03, 0.3, 0.

Size-Controlled Au-CuSe Core-Shell Nanoparticles and Their Thermoelectric Properties.

One promising approach to improving thermoelectric energy conversion is to use nanostructured interfaces that enhance Seebeck coefficient while reducing thermal conductivity. Here, we synthesized Au-CuSe core-shell nanoparticles with different shell thicknesses by controlling the precursor concentration in solution. The Au-CuSe core-shell nanoparticles are about 37-53 nm in size, and the cores of the nanostructures are composed of Au nanoparticles with sizes of ∼11 nm.

Gigantic Phonon-Scattering Cross Section To Enhance Thermoelectric Performance in Bulk Crystals.

In thermoelectric energy conversions, thermal conductivity reduction is essential for enhancing thermoelectric performance while maintaining a high power factor. Herein, we propose an approach based on coated-grain structures to effectively reduce the thermal conductivity to a much greater degree when compared to that done by conventional nanodot nanocomposite. By incorporating CdTe coated layers on the surface of SnTe grains, the thermal conductivity is as low as 1.

Right sizes of nano- and microstructures for high-performance and rigid bulk thermoelectrics.

In this paper, we systematically investigate three different routes of synthesizing 2% Na-doped PbTe after melting the elements: (i) quenching followed by hot-pressing (QH), (ii) annealing followed by hot-pressing, and (iii) quenching and annealing followed by hot-pressing. We found that the thermoelectric figure of merit, zT, strongly depends on the synthesis condition and that its value can be enhanced to ∼ 2.0 at 773 K by optimizing the size distribution of the nanostructures in the material.