This work intends to expand upon the materials and applications achievable by non-thermal plasma processing, as well as to further the understanding of thermal and electrical transport in bulk silicon nanostructures, with an emphasis on optimizing these structures for thermoelectric performance. The focus of this work is to develop and characterize novel systems for the synthesis of nanoparticles and nanostructures.

These particles will be used to create high performance thermoelectric materials from inexpensive, abundant materials, and develop knowledge that will aid in thermal engineering of future materials. Non-thermal plasma synthesis and processing will be utilized to produce silicon and silicon carbide nanoparticles with narrow size distributions, tunable size, and controllable surface composition and morphology. The synthesis and investigation of novel nanostructures exhibiting surface plasmon resonance will be presented.

The compositing and sintering of dissimilar nanomaterials via hot pressing to create novel silicon bulk nanostructures will be demonstrated. Such samples are extensively characterized and modeled to correlate their thermoelectric performance to physical structure (e.g. grain size, porosity, inclusions) and elucidate the role of these structures on electrical and thermal transport.