Flexible Nanocrystal-Coated Glass Fibers for High-Performance Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Recent efforts on the development of nanostructured thermoelectric materials from nanowires (Boukai, A. I.; et al. Nature 2008, 451, (7175), 168-171; Hochbaum, A. I.; et al. Nature 2008, 451, (7175), 163-167) and nanocrystals (Kim, W.; et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2006, 96, (4), 045901; Poudel, B.; et al. Science 2008, 320, (5876), 634-638; Scheele, M.; et al. Adv. Funct. Mater. 2009, 19, (21), 3476-3483; Wang, R. Y.; et al. Nano Lett. 2008, 8, (8), 2283-2288) show the comparable or superior performance to the bulk crystals possessing the same chemical compositions because of the dramatically reduced thermal conductivity due to phonon scattering at nanoscale surface and interface. Up to date, the majority of the thermoelectric devices made from these inorganic nanostructures are fabricated into rigid configuration. The explorations of truly flexible composite-based flexible thermoelectric devices (See, K. C.; et al. Nano Lett. 2010, 10, (11), 4664-4667) have thus far achieved much less progress, which in principle could significantly benefit the conversion of waste heat into electricity or the solid-state cooling by applying the devices to any kind of objects with any kind of shapes. Here we report an example using a scalable solution-phase deposition method to coat thermoelectric nanocrystals onto the surface of flexible glass fibers. Our investigation of the thermoelectric properties yields high performance comparable to the state of the art from the bulk crystals and proof-of-concept demonstration also suggests the potential of wrapping the thermoelectric fibers on the industrial pipes to improve the energy efficiency.

High-performance piezoelectric energy harvesting of vertically aligned Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 nanorod arrays

“…[5][6][7][8] Such devices can be utilized for building the self-powered systems, which can independently operate by harvesting the energies in the ambient environment without any external electrical powering systems. Among the various kinds of energies, the mechanical energies such as the air ow, vibration and object movement have wide distributions and low limitation by the environmental conditions, which can be harvested and converted into electricity by using piezoelectric materials.…”

Recent Advancements in Nanogenerators for Energy Harvesting

“…[ 100,101 ] The obvious benefi t of the thermoelectric NGs is the extensive distribution of thermal energy.…”

Measurement of Thermal Conductivity of PbTe Nanocrystal Coated Glass Fibers by the 3ω Method

“…Particularly, flexibility can allow thermoelectric devices to be installed on curved surfaces such as automobile exhaust pipes, power plant steam pipes, manufacturing industry cooling pipes, and so forth. Our previous studies 2 showed that thermoelectric fibers made from glass fibers coated with an ultrathin layer of PbTe nanocrystals (300 nm thick) can possess a similar thermoelectric figure of merit compared to traditional rigid bulk bismuth telluride modules. The module assemblies require several millimeters of thickness, which highlights a great potential for high performance with much reduced raw material cost for the coated fibers.…”

“…21−23 The fabrication of the PbTe-coated thermoelectric glass fibers follows the procedure described in our previous studies. 2 First, we synthesize PbTe nanocrystals by hot injection of trioctylphosphine-tellurium (TOP-Te) into a lead oleate solution. The chemicals including 1-octadecene (ODE, 90%), oleic acid (OA, 90%), lead(II) oxide (PbO, 99.9+%), tellurium powder (99.8%), hexane (98.5%), acetone (99.5%), chloroform (99%), hydrazine hydrate solution (80%), and acetonitrile (99.8%) were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich and used without further purification.…”