Feb. 23, 2005 — Evident Technologies of Troy, N.Y., announced it has received a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the Office of Strategic Defense for a project to develop a high performance thermoelectric material using its quantum dot technology.

The objective of the project is to demonstrate that quantum dots can be used to produce an improved thermoelectric nanomaterial by engineering thermal and electronic properties to achieve increased efficiencies. Thermoelectric materials can be fashioned into devices to create electricity from temperature differences or into solid-state cooling devices.

However, says Evident Technologies, a shortcoming of existing thermoelectric materials is that they make for inefficient devices, either for cooling or energy conversion. The company will therefore work to develop an advanced thermoelectric nanomaterial that it says could offer significant cost and performance benefits for both military and commercial applications because of the material’s improved efficiencies.

The quantum dot thermoelectric project is scheduled to be completed in June of 2005. Gregory Scholes of the University of Toronto will collaborate with Evident Technologies to measure and characterize the materials. The award was granted under the United States Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Defense SBIR Phase 1 proposal OSD04-EP3 “Nanostructure-Enhanced Bulk Thermoelectric Materials” and the program is managed by the Navy’s Office of Naval Research