The BOC Bursary is an annual award presented by BOC Gases to outstanding Tyndall students. The 2021 award was presented by Kieran Hennessy, Business & Relations Manager, BOC Gases and Prof William Scanlon to the winner Djordje Dangic.
Djordje, who is also a joint winner of this year’s Postgraduate Publication of the Year competition, received the award for his PhD research on the topic of ‘Thermal properties of germanium telluride close to the ferroelectric phase’.
PhD Student,
Tyndall National Institute.
On receiving his award, Djordje said,
“I was very happy to hear that I am the recipient of the 2021 BOC bursary award. It is truly a great honour to have been selected amongst such a large pool of talented and hardworking young researchers from Tyndall. This award has given me a great sense of motivation and encouragement which will serve me well as I pursue the next stage of my scientific career.”
Thermoelectric devices are reliable, long-lived, environmentally sustainable solutions for low power generation. They use excess heat from the environment and convert it into electrical power. However, current thermoelectric devices have low efficiency, do not scale very well (efficiency further drops if one tries to make them smaller), and often use highly toxic materials like lead.
In Djordje’s thesis, he investigates the influence of the phase transition on the material properties in germanium telluride, an excellent thermoelectric material that undergoes a structural phase transition at around 700K. The thesis provides an explanation for two intriguing phenomena experimentally observed at the phase transition in GeTe, a negative thermal expansion and the increase in the lattice thermal conductivity. Additionally, the novel design of the thermoelectric device based on ferroelectric domain walls is proposed in the thesis. It has been predicted that the power factor, and hence thermoelectric efficiency, of these structures can be up to five times larger than the ordinary bulk GeTe.
Relevant publications supporting his thesis include
BOC Gases is the largest supplier of industrial gases, speciality gases and gas equipment in Ireland.
All Tyndall Masters and PhD students, supervised by Tyndall staff or Tyndall academic members, whose research involves the institute and is beyond their first year of study, are eligible to apply. Applications for the annual BOC Gases Bursary are awarded on the basis of research accomplishments and promise for the future.