Physics from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics and the California Institute of Technology found that the good performance of copper-selenium thermoelectric generators due to the characteristic fluid behavior of the copper atoms in the crystal lattice of selenium. The paper was published in the journal Nature Materials, a brief retelling of the site leads PhysOrg.com.

Fusing in the crucible of copper and selenium, and then slowly cooling the resulting melt, physics gave selenium form a crystal lattice.

This material was thermo-electrics, that is converted into electrical energy to thermal energy. If the plate of the substance placed on the boundary between hot and cold body, the electrons will flow through the plate, generating an electric current.

The efficiency thermo-electrics depends on their thermal conductivity. With a high thermal conductivity of the temperature gradient in the material quickly disappears, and with it will stop and the electric current. The worse conductor of heat thermo-electrics, the more efficient it generates electricity.

A good generator should have the seemingly contradictory qualities. On the one hand, it must have a good generated electricity, and therefore have a crystal lattice, which provides transport of electrons. On the other hand, crystalline materials, in contrast to the liquid (amorphous), having a good heat, which reduces the efficiency of thermo-electrics.

Physicists have found that selenium-copper alloy combines two states of matter - liquid and solid. Selenium forms a crystal lattice, providing the generated current holding and copper in it fills the cavity, with a completely chaotic. The copper atoms can move within the crystal lattice of selenium as in a liquid.

The liquid state of copper in the alloy does not propagate transverse thermal vibrations, which greatly reduces the thermal conductivity. Therefore, the alloy has such unusual efficiency.

Thermo-electrics are already used in space technology for generating electricity. The potential field of application is very wide. For the first time an alloy of copper and selenium used NASA about 40 years ago, but then no one could explain its high efficiency. Knowledge of the principles underlying the work should help scientists get a much more efficient varieties.

There is a real invention, which use the phenomenon fluidity of metals to improve the efficiency of composite materials

United States Patent Application 20120040166
Kind Code A1
Livschits; Gabreal; et al. February 16, 2012
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Composite Material, Method of Manufacturing and Device for Moldable Calibration

Abstract
Composite materials and methods and systems for their manufacture are provided. According to one aspect, a composite material includes a collection of molded together multilayer capsules, each capsule originally formed of a core and shell. The shell, after a plastic deformation process, forms a pseudo-porous structure, with pores locations containing the capsule cores. The cores are made of a material, eg, synthetic diamond, which is harder than the external shell, which can be formed of, eg, a ductile metal such as copper. The composite material has high thermal and / or electrical conductivity and / or dissipation.
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Inventors: Livschits; Gabreal; (San Francisco, CA); Flider; Gennadiy; (San Francisco, CA)
Serial No.: 108 597
Series Code: 13
Filed: May 16, 2011

Now fast forward to the area of nano - Measurement

Physicists have built a model of gold nanoparticles using electron tomography of high resolution. The article appeared in the scientific journal Nature.

The object of research performed nanoparticle with a diameter of 10 nm, consisting of 3871 atoms. Scientists have made a few pictures from different points of the particles through a transmission electron microscope. After that, they used some special algorithms (such as your own pattern analysis of the projection microscope, scientists have known novel), and restored the three-dimensional image.

Scientists were able to obtain permission from the 2.4 Angstrom (0.24 nanometer). It is not up to record the results (0.5 angstrom), but the strength of the new method is that the mathematical algorithms at work is no a priori information about the object is not assumed (most of the methods requires knowledge about the structure of the particles within the sample).

The researchers say that on the pictures you can identify individual atoms and their groups. In particular, they were able to obtain data on the internal structure of the particles, confirming that the basis of its structure is a distorted icosahedron - a regular polyhedron with twenty triangular faces.

If we consider the fundamental basis for obtaining such accuracy, that as the equivalent of a technical solution may be to consider the following solution:

United States Patent Application 20120029845
Kind Code A1
Flider; Gennadiy; et al. February 2, 2012
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APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR FLUID MONITORING

Abstract
According to some embodiments, an apparatus and method are provided for detecting the composition of a fluid. An alternating electromagnetic field may be applied to the fluid and distortions in the electromagnetic field are compared with predetermined, expected distortion "signatures" for particular components at particular concentrations. The presence and concentration of the components in the fluid may be detected by detecting these distortion signatures.
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Inventors: Flider; Gennadiy; (San Francisco, CA); Livschits; Gabreal; (San Francisco, CA)
Serial No.: 154 280
Series Code: 13
Filed: June 6, 2011

All the above shows that an important analytical tool for assessing the effectiveness of a research project can be accurately matched system of technical equivalents