I am a researcher at Brunel University and have spent the last three and a half years developing processes to produce low-cost thermoelectric devices for low temperature heat harvesting. Our expertise and emphasis has always been on high volume manufacture, and originally we were looking at adapting printing processes to produce temperature sensors ('Printed thick-film thermocouple sensors' S. Duby, B.J. Ramsey, and D.J. Harrison, Electronics Letters - 17 March 2005 - Volume 41, Issue 6, p. 312-314). Since then we have moved on to thin film processes and thermoelectric power generation. We have been generously funded by the EPSRC over the years and have managed to develop a simple three-step manufacture process for the production of complete thin-film thermoelectric devices. The process has the advantage of requiring no pattern registration and being designed specifically for high-volume production techniques such as sputtering and thermal evaporation. This means that entire devices can be manufactured using one reel-to- reel, non-stop processing envelope on a single piece of deposition equipment. We are hoping that this will afford significant cost reductions. The vast majority of this work has concentrated on process development rather than materials optimisation and we have up to now been using thermal evaporation processes to lay down pure metals as the active elements. We have however recently made contact with an organisation with large reel-to-reel sputtering facilities who are keen to collaborate. The advantage with sputtering is that it opens up the possibility of depositing more exotic materials and semiconducting compounds such as iron-disilicide. This in turn suggests the potential to significantly increase the output of our generators. I am no materials expert, and as we are currently deciding whether to put together a proposal for continued funding for this project, I am doing a little bit of research on whether there is anybody out there who might be interested in the work we are doing and might be keen bring their expertise to bear on the question of materials and offer advice on, in particular, low-cost, non-toxic thermoelectric thin films.