Professor Kanishka Biswas of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Research, Bengaluru, an autonomous institution of the governmental Department of Science and Technology, has just been named as one of the recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award, the highest Indian award for scientific work, for his development of a ‘high performance thermoelectric material’, Cadmium-doped Silver Antimony Telluride. 

Due to a phenomenon called ‘Seebeck effect’, if there is a temperature differential across the ends of two dissimilar electrical conductors or semiconductors, then a voltage will automatically develop between the two materials. The key here is temperature differential, which is hard to sustain. However, Cadmium doped Silver Antimony Telluride is a bad conductor of heat while also being a good conductor of electricity. This means that with this material, it is possible to tap waste heat and produce electricity from it.