Great for applications where you want to slow down the transfer of heat-energy (such as the supplied coat example).
BUT
Don't start thinking about using these in places where there is an excess of energy that needs to be disposed of... putting these on processors to make use of the heat differential there, would likely destroy the processor since the removal of the excessive heat-energy needs to be accelerated, not slowed (to do work creating electrical energy).

So they want to make a coat that sucks heat from the body? Isn't that what a coat is trying to prevent?

If used in the forcing mode then the material would take heat away quicker.

re; Two Replies
Places where there is an excess of energy that needs to be disposed of is where we should be thinking of placing them. Granted it would take adding a larger radiating surface but in exchange for capital cost you get fuel cost free electricity.

So this opens up the possibility of recovering low grade heat from sources such as internal combustion exhausts and even power station stacks, producing electrical energy directly?
If that can be done economically, that will be a seriously valuable breakthrough.
Of course, reversed, it will be usable for the construction of refrigeration plants with no moving parts on a much larger scale than is commonly available for the TEC-operated drinks coolers for use in cars and campers, and if the temperature can be lowered sufficiently, perhaps even superconducting power transmission lines.

I'm drooling over this....if it's really cheap, the USB charging peltier junction camp stoves might just come down in my price range....and yeah, it would be cute to charge my phone simply by WEARING my jacket.
Of course, the patent royalties will probably keep the price up to the point where I still can't justify it.....but 20 years from now, watch out! :)

would that work with giant solar collectors to focus heat and make KWh? wle

NASA had a peltier / thermocouple energy recovery car they built in the 1970's. There are PDFs of the article out there.
IBM had a new fab created peltier in the works a while ago I heard about on NPR. No word since, any one got anything on that? I vaguely remember in the high teens for efficiency.

If they could adapt it to salvage waste heat from power plant condensers, that would be a major breakthrough. The condenser in a typical steam cycle squanders almost half of the input energy. That's why big plants are usually located near large bodies of water or have huge cooling towers with cloudy plumes coming out of them. Combined-cycle plants boost efficiency over that of steam-only plants, but there's still an enormous amount of low-level heat just going to waste.

I always wondered why they didn't centrifuge out the cold steam and reprocess the hot part. Anyway, maybe some good cheep TEM's will make this viable.