Dr. Jeff Snyder from California Institute of Technology Visited SICCAS

Dr. Jeff Snyder, faculty associate in California institute of technology, was invited by Professor Lidong Chen and Professor Wenqing Zhang to join SICCAS as a visiting professor. Since joining in the JPL/Caltech in 1997, Dr. Snyder has been investigating novel thermoelectric materials, recently focusing on complex Zintl phases and nanometer scale structures. During his short trip in SICCAS from April 20 to April 23 in 2010, Dr. Jeff Snyder had quite a few discussions with the students and research staffs in SICCAS on the study of thermoelectric materials and devices. 

Dr. Jeff Snyder presented an interesting and impressive lecture entitled” Zintl Chemistry for Designing High Efficiency Thermoelectric Materials”, which introduced his recent studies on using Zintl rule and theoretical calculations to design novel thermoelectric materials. The systemic studies of three compounds, Yb14MnSb11, Ba8Ga16Ge30 and la2Te3, were presented to give an example to show how the properties are optimized to realize high thermoelectric performance via theoretical calculations. Dr. Jeff Snyder also proposed the possible directions for the future study to achieve high efficiency thermoelectric materials. Prof. Wenqing Zhang as well as many other professors, research staffs and graduate students in SICCAS attended the lecture and had a detailed discussion with Dr. Jeff Snyder.