WABI-SABI Materials: a Path to Harvest Wasted Heat

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that celebrates the beauty of imperfection. In this philosophy, imperfections are not seen as defects but features that add character and history to the object. Bringing this philosophy to material science is at the core of our group research as we explore the synthetic methods and properties of imperfect (Wabi-Sabi) materials that can revolutionize different fields. With the vision of creating defects by design, in my talk, I’ll walk you through our approach of using precisely designed tiny particles as precursors and how this approach can be used to build thermoelectric materials that allow us to use wasted heat to generate electricity!