Competitive Advantages:
Bi-functional cloak, Independent of boundary conditions, Ability to operate in thermal as well as electric regimes, External heat and electric currents are not affected.
A thermoelectric cloak including an inner region and an external medium. The inner region has a cloaking effect and is simultaneously invisible from both heat and electric charge fluxes; and heat, electric currents, and gradients in the external medium are unaltered by the cloaking effect of the inner region.USF researchers have developed a novel method to create a thermoelectric cloak capable of hiding objects from thermoelectric flow. This method is independent of any boundary conditions and can operate in different single domain regimes. The cloak also does not disturb the coupled external heat and electric currents. To achieve this, transformation optics are applied to thermoelectric phenomena, where thermal and electric flows are coupled via the Seebeck coefficient and Joule heating is taken into account. Laminate metamaterials are constructed using bilayer composites to achieve the cloaking. This technology provides a significant step forward towards finding unexplored ways to control and manipulate coupled transport.
