Thermoelectric materials permit the direct conversion of temperature differences into electric energy, and vice versa. They are therefore of highest technological interest in applications such as solid state coolers, waste heat recovery, sensors and detectors, and power generators including remote power generation.
Thermoelectric materials are often called "environmentally green," and for good reasons. Not only can they help generate electrical energy from waste gases as they are generated in such processes as home heating, industrial fabrication and automotive motion. In cooling...

The book presents a number of novel ceramic materials that have great potential for advanced technological applications, such as microwave devices, communication instruments and memory devices.
The materials covered include piezoelectric ceramics, zirconia ceramics, doped NiO ceramic nanostructures, BST ceramics (Barium-Strontium-Titanates), manganite ceramics, Ce-doped LaMnO₃ and Sb-doped NKN (Sodium-Potassium-Niobates), as well as materials with ferrite structures, and with multi-ferroic structures
The materials were characterized experimentally by means of XRD...

Due to their unique optical, thermal, catalytic, magnetic and electronic properties, nano-sized semiconductors have a huge potential in a great number of technological applications, ranging from photovoltaics and photocatalysis to biosensors and medicine. In the last couple of decades, the synthesis and characterization of these materials has been of key interest not only to materials scientists but also to researchers working in the field of physics, chemistry, molecular biology and medicine.
The main focus of the present book is the characterization of a number of...

The relatively high metallicity of magnetic materials for practical applications imposes limitations for their efficient use due to their unfavorable characteristics. Accordingly, magnetic oxides with ferromagnetic properties emerged as the most widely used magnetic materials for practical applications, owing to their characteristic high resistivity and low eddy current losses, chemical stability, simplicity of production in mass quantities, and other favorable characteristics. An important class of these oxides is the class of hexagonal ferrites developed in the early 1950's, which...

The book reviews the most interesting, in the author's opinion, publications concerned with radiation defects formed in 6H-, 4H-, and 3C-SiC under irradiation with electrons, neutrons, and some kinds of ions. At the beginning, the SiC electrical parameters making this material promising for application in modern electronics are discussed. Specific features of the crystal structure of SiC are also considered. It is shown that, when wide-bandgap semiconductors are studied, it is necessary to take into account the temperature dependence of the carrier removal rate (ηe), which is a...

A self-consistent, microscopic model of individual- and -reacted point defects requires a reliable connection with the experimentally deduced structural, spectroscopic and thermodynamic properties of the defect centres, to allow their unambiguous identification.

Aim of this book is to focus on the properties of defects in semiconductors of the fourth group under a physico-chemical approach, capable to demonstrate whether the full acknowledgement of their chemical nature could account for several problems encountered in practice or would suggest further experimental or theoretical...

Well-defined single crystals of high quality are of importance in some branches of industry as well as in fundamental investigations of materials research. This monograph is devoted to the growth of crystals using optical furnaces. Optical furnaces can be understood and designed making recurrence to concepts that stem from analytical geometry. Therefore, these ideas are presented taking both "faces" of analytical geometry into account.
For the operation and maintenance of optical furnaces it is advantageous to gain an understanding of their principle of operation and alignment...

The book gives an overview on biomineralization, biological, biocompatible and biomimetic materials. It reveals the use of biomaterials alone or in composites, how their performance can be improved by tailoring their surface properties by external factors and how standard surface modification techniques can be applied in the area of biomaterials to beneficially influence their growth on surfaces.
Important in studying of biomineralization is the study of the surface and chapter 2 explores typical techniques for surface characterization and shows how these techniques can be modified...

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an automated approach to determine any changes in the integrity of a mechanical system. The SHM system gives information in real time and online.
The knowledge on Root Mean Square Deviation (RMSD) techniques is employed and presented in this writing. Besides that, SHM system in wind turbine system is becoming very important. This book places emphasize on the application of biocomposite turbine blades for vertical axis wind turbines. The dynamics characterization of mechanical system on biocomposite turbine blades is determined with several...

In the Li-ion battery, Ions' transportation between positive and negative electrodes relies on organic-based electrolyte with a low flammable point. Therefore, use of this type of electrolyte lead to a lot of safety issues. In addition, the potential window of commercially available organic electrolyte is only up to about 4.5V, resulting that those cathode materials with high potentials cannot be used. Therefore, it is important to address above issues by developing multi-electron electrode materials, explore new nonflammable electrolyte and new battery formats.
This book compiles...