We are thrilled to share that the START project has been recently featured by Innovation News Network (INN), highlighting our latest breakthrough in sustainable energy technology!

What is Innovation News Network?

Innovation News Network (INN) is a prominent online and print media platform dedicated to covering the latest research, emerging science, policy, and innovation topics across the globe. They are a go-to source for news in fields critical to Europe’s future, including science, environment, energy, critical raw materials, technology, and electric vehicles.

INN’s content, which includes their quarterly publication The Innovation Platform (that will report the START article in the next issue), focuses on providing in-depth articles and features from a wide range of policymakers, scientists, and researchers, making it a key platform for disseminating the results of EU-funded projects like START to a broad, interested audience.

We had already published with them an article last year, to present the project, its approach and the expected impacts. But now we could open the stage curtain and give some insight in what we have actually obtained in our work!

What did we include in our article?

• Key Achievements: By using a combination of High Energy Ball Milling (HEBM) and Upgraded-Field Assisted Sintering Technology (U-FAST), we achieved a record thermoelectric performance (read it in the article!).
• Significance: This performance rivals commercial systems like Bi₂Te₃ and PbTe, eliminating reliance on scarce raw materials, confirming the feasibility of using secondary raw materials for a more circular and resilient European energy system.
• Holistic Approach: We explained our integrated work on device simulation, and Life-Cycle Sustainability — and our preliminary results show that the new Tetrahedrite-based thermoelectric generators could significantly reduce CO₂ emissions and human toxicity compared to conventional technologies.
• Next Step: Test our first prototype thermoelectric device!

Read the full article on the website of Innovation News Network! Click on this link: START article 2025