Mathematical model and optimization of a thin-film thermoelectric generator

Newbrook, Daniel W.; Huang, Ruomeng; Richards, Stephen P.; Sharma, Shivank; Reid, Gillian; Hector, Andrew L.; Groot, C. H. de

doi:10.1088/2515-7655/ab4242

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 41 publications

(50 reference statements)

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“…It has been reported that devices based on thermoelectric technologies can generate even more power than those of piezoelectric systems. 272,275 Compared with bulk devices, thin film or lowdimensional based thermoelectric generators (TEG) have several advantages: reduction in the use of costly materials 276 ; a wide range of different designs and possible flexibility 277 ; possible integration for on-chip cooling or energy harvesting, 278 etc. For instance, the electrical resistance only increases less than 5% when the bending radius is ≥5 mm, providing a promising wearable thermoelectric application ( Figure 6A); 279 a stretchable temperature sensor can measure temperature precisely with poor strain sensitivity, critical in soft robotics ( Figure 6B); 280 3D helical thermoelectric coils can be formed without compromising the flexibility of 2D materials ( Figure 6C); 103,281 a planar or large area pn junction version of TEG is more CMOS compatible than π-type bulk topology ( Figure 6D,E).…”

Section: Thermal Conductivity Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermoelectric effect and devices on IVA and VA Xenes

Zhu

Chen

Jiang

et al. 2021

InfoMat

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Emerging Xenes, mostly group IVA and VA elemental two-dimensional (2D) materials, have small and tunable band gaps between graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, giving versatile electrical properties. While their microelectronic or optoelectronic properties are being extensively explored, there remains a lack of study on Xenes' uniquely advantageous thermoelectric performance. This review highlights state-of-the-art experimental and theoretical progress in the thermoelectric effect and devices of IVA and VA Xenes. Vertically displaced, a.k.a. "buckled" or "puckered," atomic arrays result in exotic and tunable electrical or thermal transport behaviors. Different from chemical doping strategies usually employed in bulk thermoelectric materials, 2D Xenes can be tuned by physical means, such as atomic layer control and quantum confinement effects. A precise and compatible platform for 2D thermoelectric effect and devices study is available via the engagement between micro/nanofabrication of 2D Xene transistors and thermal property measurement techniques. This review also reveals potential thermoelectric applications of Xenes and their compounds (Bi 2 Te 3 , Bi 2 Se 3 , etc.), such as accurate stretchable temperature sensors, fast terahertz photodetectors, and so on.

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Section: Thermal Conductivity Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thermoelectric effect and devices on IVA and VA Xenes

Zhu

Chen

Jiang

et al. 2021

InfoMat

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“…W-TEGs can be flexible using three approaches: fabrication of thin-film type TEGs, TEGs using conductive polymers as thermoelectric units, and TEGs using flexible organic substrates connected to rigid inorganic thermoelectric units [25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. However, thin-film type thermoelectric units have difficulty in establishing a large enough temperature difference and their power generation performance is usually poor [32][33][34][35]. Although conductive polymers are flexible thus to fit the skin well, their low power factor largely limits the power generation performance of the corresponding TEG [36][37][38][39].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-Performance Wearable Bi2Te3-Based Thermoelectric Generator

Xing¹,

Tang²,

Wang³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Wearable thermoelectric generators (w-TEGs) convert thermal energy into electrical energy to realize self-powering of intelligent electronic devices, thus reducing the burden of battery replacement and charging, and improving the usage time and efficiency of electronic devices. Through finite element simulation, this study successfully designed high-performance thermoelectric generator and made it into wearable thermoelectric module by adopting “rigid device - flexible connection” method. It was found that higher convective heat transfer coefficient on cold-end leads to larger effective temperature difference and better power generation performance of device in typical wearable scenario. Meanwhile, at same convective heat transfer coefficient on the cold-end, longer TE leg length leads to larger temperature difference established at both ends of device, larger device output power and open-circuit voltage. However, when the convective heat transfer coefficient increases to a certain level, optimization effect of increasing TE leg length on device power generation performance will gradually diminish. For devices with fixed temperature difference between two ends, longer TE leg length leads to higher resistance of TEG, resulting in lower device output power but slight increase in open-circuit voltage. Finally, sixteen 16×4×2 mm2 TEGs (L=1.38 mm, W=0.6 mm) and two modules were fabricated and tested. At hot end temperature Th=33 ℃ and cold end temperature Tc=30 ℃, the actual maximum output power Pout of TEG is about 0.2 mW, and the actual maximum output power Pout of TEG module is about 1.602 mW, which is highly consistent with the simulated value. This work brings great convenience to research and development of wearable thermoelectric modules and provides new, environmentally friendly and efficient power solution for wearable devices.

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“…In the design of IP-TEG, a major tradeoff is considered between the TE-strip dimension and fill factor (FF). [48,49] FF quantifies how efficiently a TEG occupies a substrate, i.e., the ratio between the surface area of TEG materials and the overall surface area of the device. A maximum power density requires a balance of factors: FF, inter-strip spacing, dimension, and the number of TE strips.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel Stacking Design of a Flexible Thin‐Film Thermoelectric Generator with a Metal–Insulator–Semiconductor Architecture

Tao

Hao

Assender

2021

Adv Elect Materials

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pollution, a tradeoff between size and storage, inconvenience of disassembly and replacement for wearers [2] ) for such applications. As a green/clean and self-powered source, wearable TEGs can locally/continuously convert thermal energy (i.e., the temperature difference, ΔT, between the human body and the surroundings) into electrical energy according to the Seebeck effect using thermoelectric (TE) materials. Flexible/wearable TEGs are commonly developed as either fully organic [3][4][5][6] or inorganic/organic hybrids. [7][8][9][10] Inorganic TE thin-film deposition on flexible polymer sheet is a typical route to inorganic/organic hybrids, which has attracted significant attention recently because a thin-film configuration has the potential compatibility with low-cost fabrication technologies (e.g., roll-to-roll, R2R [11] ), low material consumption/cost, [12] minimum size/weight, [13] large-area manufacturability, [14] and a wide range of structural designs of TEGs (e.g., planar, [15] cylindrical, [16] Y-type, [17] corrugated-structure [18] or folded-mode, [14] slope-type, [19] coil-up coin-shape, [20] and oxide-based transversal [21] ). In laboratory research, various techniques have been investigated to fabricate TE thin films, e.g., sputtering, [22] evaporation, [23] inkjet [24] / screen [25] printing, pulsed laser deposition, [26] molecular beam epitaxy, [27] and electrodeposition. [28] Among them, only sputtering shows the most promise for scale-up manufacture of TEGs like R2R processing. [29] Hence, sputtering is employed in this study.Flexible thin-film TEGs can be assembled in both crossplane (CP-TEG) and in-plane (IP-TEG) structural designs, which allow heat flows/TE legs perpendicular and parallel, respectively, to the substrate. [30] CP-TEG has already been commercialized in bulk TEGs and some μTEGs, however, to further decrease the size to nanorange, the crossplane configuration is not practical since maintaining a large ΔT across a nanothick TE leg is an almost impossible challenge [14,31] and the power output is very poor (e.g., refs. [32-39]). Although the development of nanosize CP-TEG is restricted, nanomaterials still attract significant interest for scientists, and the research on IP-TEG is moving toward the use of nanomaterials (e.g., thin film, [40] quantum well, [41] and nanowire [42] ), A stacked thermoelectric generator on a flexible polymer sheet is investigated that can utilize a low-cost high throughput roll-to-roll process, employing a metal-insulator-semiconductor structure of <100 nm thick Cu and bismuth telluride films with a ≈1 µm thick acrylate insulating coating. Thermoelectric strips can be stacked and connected in the out-of-plane direction, which significantly decreases the size required in the substrate plane and also gives rise to the opportunity for greatly extending power output by stacking thousands of layers. A smooth surface of stacked layers is confirmed due to the nature of the acrylate layer. Room-temperature sputtering can produce good quality/crystalline films, ...

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Mathematical model and optimization of a thin-film thermoelectric generator

Cited by 9 publications

References 41 publications

Thermoelectric effect and devices on IVA and VA Xenes

Thermoelectric effect and devices on IVA and VA Xenes

High-Performance Wearable Bi2Te3-Based Thermoelectric Generator

Novel Stacking Design of a Flexible Thin‐Film Thermoelectric Generator with a Metal–Insulator–Semiconductor Architecture

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