National Center for Computational Sciences

Principal Investigator: Jihui Yang

Affiliation: GM R&D Center

Machine: Cray XT4

Allocation: 10,000,000 processor hours

Research Summary: More than 60 percent of the energy created by a vehicle’s engine is lost as waste heat, but thermoelectric materials promise to take that heat and turn it into electricity, potentially saving hundreds of millions of gallons of gasoline each year. This project will address a key issue in the study of superior thermoelectric materials—the role of nanostructural features in the electronic, lattice, and mechanical properties of nanostructured bulk materials.