Easy understanding of thermoelectrics by entropic approach

What is it about?

Thermoelectric materials couple fluxes of electric charge and entropy, which are treated here at equal rank. The respective conjugated intensive variables electrochemical potential and temperature then appear as the thermodynamic potentials. Moreover, the thermoelectric material is described by a material-specific tensor, which is composed only of the isothermal electric conductivity, the Seebeck coefficient and the entropy conductivity.

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Why is it important?

The benefit of the approach is the appearance of a material-specific thermoelectric tensor rather than a so-called kinetic matrix, which not only provides a new quality to the discussion but also facilitates descriptions of the thermoelectric phenomenon and the underlying energy conversion process. The latter can easily be understood as the transfer of energy from thermal to electric phenomenon or vice versa when fluxes of entropy and electric charge, as well as the local thermodynamic potentials temperature and electrochemical potential, are known.

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