Work

Efficient and affordable thermoelectric measurement setup using Arduino and LabVIEW for education and research

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Thermoelectric materials can convert thermal energy into electricity, making them promising candidates for harvesting waste heat, an increasingly important challenge in the energy-intensive modern world. The search for improved thermoelectric materials is therefore an active area of research in materials physics. Despite their fundamental and practical significance, thermoelectric properties—such as the Seebeck coefficient and power factor—are rarely explored in student labs due to the complexity in measurement schemes and requirement for sophisticated equipment. In this work, we present a user-friendly, low-cost, and efficient thermoelectric measurement system built with Arduino and LabVIEW, which can simultaneously measure Seebeck coefficients and power factors as a function of temperature. This was made possible by improving the resolution of Arduino over ∼1000 times with amplifiers and noise reduction schemes. With a total cost of only ∼$100 and simple measurement protocols, this setup is well suited not only for student labs but also for efficient thermoelectric research.

Source: American Journal of Physics

DOI: 10.1119/5.0289649

Authors: Alex J. Oh, Colby J. Stoddard, Craig Queenan, Seongshik Oh

Institution: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Language: English

Topic: Advanced Thermoelectric Materials and Devices

Subfield: Materials Chemistry

Field: Materials Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: National Science Foundation

Award: Collaborative Research: Epitaxial spin heterostructures for energy efficient magnetic memory