Enhanced thermal sensitivity in single metal thermocouple: significance of thickness-engineering of the metal layers

Abstract

Single metal thermocouples (SMTs) have recently been developed with a new design concept of width-engineering of metal segments. In such designs, two segments of different micro-width are formed to obtain different levels of Seebeck effects. The variations in the Seebeck effect achieved from dissimilar segment width are small. In addition, the fabrication of such micro-width patterns requires special fabrication facilities such as photolithography or electron-beam lithography. In this paper, an alternative method is presented that has the potential to give high thermal sensing SMTs and requires no sophisticated facilities to fabricate. The method is based on thickness-engineering instead of widthengineering, and thus devices can be obtained from commonly available thin film deposition techniques. Constructing better thermal sensing SMTs is possible with this approach as thickness can be easily and conveniently varied down to nanoscale range which is necessary to achieve significant changes in the Seebeck effects from effectively utilizing size effects. As a result, a high thermal sensing bismuth based-SMT has been fabricated with a sensitivity of as high as 31 μV K −1 , one of the highest values reported for SMTs. It is straightforward, more convenient over width-engineering approach and thus SMTs can be easily developed.

A Review on Pencil Drawn Thermoelectric Devices on Paper

“…44 To improve the performance of thermoelectric devices, researchers have employed various coating techniques during the fabrication process. One such method involves chemically immersing a paper-pencil composite into an ethanolic polyethyleneimine (PEI) solution, 45 schematic shown in Fig. 6a.…”

“…Thermoelectric generator was reported using only graphite material, eliminating the need for additional materials typically used for p-type and n-type legs in further study by Mulla et al 45 The authors have designed the trace designs 1 (TD1) and trace designs 2 (TD2) for p and n types, respectively and tested them for their utility. The potential difference, output power, and current were measured while altering the p and n-type legs temperature gradient for a TD2 configuration.…”

Sensors-on-paper: Fabrication of graphite thermal sensor arrays on cellulose paper for large area temperature mapping

“…Typically, single-conductor thermocouples are fabricated from a single metal strip/layer, which requires two dissimilar width patterns of a metal of which at least one with sub-micron or nanoscale width in order to achieve different thermopowers from a single metal [10] , [14] , [15] . Such devices demand special fabrication techniques such as electron-beam lithography or photolithography in order to form sub-micron width metal patterns [7] , [16] . In addition, the multiple thermal sensor patterns are obtained by using special fabrication facilities, such as screen printing or thin film deposition techniques [1] , [15] .…”

Comprehensive Insights into Synthesis, Structural Features, and Thermoelectric Properties of High-Performance Inorganic Chalcogenide Nanomaterials for Conversion of Waste Heat to Electricity

“…Semiconductor nanostructures have greatly contributed to the growth of nanotechnology due to their high surface to volume ratio and tunable band gap. 34 This attractive class of materials has been used in many functional nanodevices including sensors, 35,36 transistors, 37 solar cells, 38 electrocatalysts, 39 photocatalysts, 40,41 adsorbents, 42,43 and nanogenerators. 44 The working of thermoelectric devices is based on three effects, namely, the Seebeck effect, 45 Peltier effect, 46 and Thomson effect.…”