As we are advancing our world to smart living, a critical challenge is increasingly pressing -increased energy demand. While we need mega power supplies for running data centers and other emerging applications, we also need instant small-scale power supply for trillions of electronics that we are using and will use in the age of Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Everything (IoE). Such power supplies must meet some parallel demands: sufficient energy supply in reliable, safe and affordable manner. In that regard, thermoelectric generators emerge as important renewable energy source with great potential to take advantage of the widely-abundant and normally-wasted thermal energy. Thanks to the advancements of nano-engineered materials, thermoelectric generators' (TEG) performance and feasibility are gradually improving. However, still innovative engineering solutions are scarce to sufficiently take the TEG performance and functionalities beyond the status-quo. Opportunities exist to integrate them with emerging fields and technologies such as wearable electronics, bio-integrated systems, cybernetics and others. This review will mainly focus on unorthodox but effective engineering solutions to notch up the overall performance of TEGs and broadening their application base. First, nanotechnology's influence in TEGs' development will be introduced, followed by a discussion on how the introduction of mechanically reconfigurable devices can shape up the emerging spectrum of novel TEG technologies. The technology-driven age we are currently in, have brought great advantages to establish a more comfortable and smarter living and it is leading the way for an even faster-growing development in all areas of science and engineering, but at the same time it brings an incredibly fast growing demand for energy. Current and future energy consumption mandate the need for alternative energy sources, with reduced environmental impact. Readily available solar and wind energies have lead the way as alternative energy sources to environmentally challenging fossil fuels.1 Moreover, thanks to more recent developments in thermoelectric (TE) materials and devices, the possibility of making a better use of the widely abundant and normally wasted thermal energy, has becoming a popular and feasible alternative.2 More importantly, thermal waste has become a very important and environmentallyfriendly source of otherwise wasted energy.3,4 There has been already an important set of studies covering the mechanism involved during the conversion from thermal to electric energy. [5][6][7][8] Such studies have been the starting point to develop and optimize novel TE materials with the resourceful aid of uprising nanotechnologies. 9,10 In this review, we will first shortly introduce some important basic concepts and relations about thermoelectrics, as well as some of the current efforts to use nanotechnologies and nano-materials to improve performance and viability. Next, we will focus on identifying innovative devices, novel engineering approach...

Flexible and semi‐transparent high performance thermoelectric energy harvesters are fabricated on low cost bulk mono‐crystalline silicon (100) wafers. The released silicon is only 3.6% as thick as bulk silicon reducing the thermal loss significantly and generating nearly 30% more output power than unpeeled harvesters. This generic batch processing is a pragmatic way of transforming traditional silicon circuitry for extremely deformable high‐performance integrated electronics.

With a projection of nearly doubling up the world population by 2050, we need wide variety of renewable and clean energy sources to meet the increased energy demand. Solar energy is considered as the leading promising alternate energy source with the pertinent challenge of off sunshine period and uneven worldwide distribution of usable sun light. Although thermoelectricity is considered as a reasonable renewable energy from wasted heat, its mass scale usage is yet to be developed. Here we show, large scale integration of nano-manufactured pellets of thermoelectric nano-materials, embedded into window glasses to generate thermoelectricity using the temperature difference between hot outside and cool inside. For the first time, this work offers an opportunity to potentially generate 304 watts of usable power from 9 m2 window at a 20°C temperature gradient. If a natural temperature gradient exists, this can serve as a sustainable energy source for green building technology.

We report the preparation of nanoscale bismuth antimony telluride and bismuth telluride particles, that are hot pressed to make thermopiles and then inserted into window glass to transform it into a thermoelectric window for power generation. This serves to demonstrate that at a given temperature difference (essentially the temperature difference between the outdoors and inside the room) substantial, clean thermoelectricity is generated. In the early 1800s, Seebeck discovered that if two dissimilar materials are coupled together with two junctions subjected to different temperatures (T Hot and T Cold ), an electric potential difference (DV) is created across the junction that is proportional to the temperature difference (DT = T Hot ÀT Cold ). The temperature gradient causes the majority carriers to move away from the hot junction towards the cold junction, which results in a net flow of current through the device upon the application of an appropriate load. As a result, thermoelectric (TE) materials can convert thermal energy into electrical energy, making them ideal candidates for renewable energy applications using abundant reservoirs of otherwise wasted heat.Thermoelectric generators with quiet, highly stable, stationary operation are one of the most explored areas of research in the renewable energy sector. We demonstrate a large-scale 132.25 cm 2 plexiglas [poly(methyl methacrylate)] panel embedded with 72 pairs of complementary thermoelectric nanomaterials (Bi 0.4 Sb 1.6 Te 3 and Bi 1.75 Te 3.25 ) as thermopiles to show both its promise as a thermoelectric window and to systematically study and discuss the technical challenges to be overcome to make this technology substantially efficient. We have also used finite element modeling (FEM), a widely known system-level behavior analysis tool, to predict and analyze the various factors contributing to the performance of our system. Although the output from the model is an order of magnitude lower than its experimental counterpart due to the limitations in the software, the model successfully validated the concept.Modeling thermal transfer or heat exchange in systems is challenging due to the complexity of the governing heat exchange equations. [1,2] FEM is a highly capable tool for simultaneously incorporating and solving the electrical and heat equations, leading to a close approximation of the real-world problem. Analytical modeling of thermoelectric systems poses a stiff challenge due to its inability to solve the electrical and thermal partial differential equations (PDEs) that govern these systems. The inadequacy is further compounded by the complex boundary conditions arising due to the physical shape of these systems. Various conditions render nonlinearity to certain parameters, making them difficult solve by using conventional analytical methods. FEM accounts well for such nonlinearity to converge to a solution for TE systems. [1] A two-pillar device is simulated for a temperature gradient that replicates the difference between the solar-heated outdoors...

This paper reports a generic process flow to fabricate mechanically flexible and optically semi-transparent thermoelectric generators (TEGs), micro lithium-ion batteries (μLIB) and metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors (MOSCAPs) on mono-crystalline silicon fabric platforms from standard bulk silicon (100) wafers. All the fabricated devices show outstanding mechanical flexibility and performance, making an important step towards monolithic integration of Energy Chip (selfpowered devices) including energy harvesters and electronic devices on flexible platforms. We also report a recyclability process for the remaining bulk substrate after release, allowing us to achieve a low cost flexible platform for high performance applications.

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CitationInayat SB, Hussain MM (2013) Abstract Thermoelectric materials embedded through or inside exterior glass windows can act as a viable source of supplemental power in geographic locations where hot weather dominates. This thermoelectricity is generated because of the thermal difference between the high temperature outside and the relatively cold temperature inside. Using physical vapor deposition process, we experimentally verify this concept by embedding bismuth telluride and antimony telluride through the 5 mm Plexiglas to demonstrate 10 nW of thermopower generation with a temperature gradient of 21°C. Albeit tiny at this point with non-optimized design and development, this concept can be extended for relatively large-scale power generation as an additional power supply for green building technology.