Heat shrink formation of a corrugated thin film thermoelectric generator

Sun, Tianlei; Peavey, Jennifer L; Shelby, M. D.; Ferguson, Scott; O’Connor, Brendan

doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2015.07.016

Cited by 48 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For α > 90°, approaching the designs of refs. [20][21][22][23][24], the density would decrease even more.…”

Section: B and C Enables Both High-density Te Modules And Good Thermalmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In this paper, a novel folding scheme is proposed for the thin-film thermoelectric generators with the heat flux and electrical current parallel to the film surface but the temperature gradient perpendicular to the plane of the TE module. Different from the previously reported corrugated thermoelectric generators [21][22][23][24][25], the 0 proposed folding enables a high packing density for the thermoelectric elements without compromising the thermal contact area to the heat source and sink. It also enables the application of only single conductiontype semiconductors as the TE materials and, thus, provides a possibility to simplify the manufacturing process and to avoid the usage of the lower quality TE materials in the module.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…However, there are several publications of various designs of the thin-film thermoelectric modules with the heat transfer in the plane of the TE film utilizing planar substrates [13,14,15,16,17,18,19], corrugated structures [20,21,22,23,24,25] or different solid supporting architectures [26,27] with some interesting approaches for flexibility and cost reduction [28,29,30,31]. They all, except some of the organic or hybrid devices [13,25,31], are designed to consist of two different TE materials to form the basic unit (TE couple) of the thermoelectric module.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The fact that the electrical resistance may become very high in the TE modules consisting of several such thin-film TE units connected electrically in series, is usually well recognized [5,23,32]. However, the significance of the available electrical current is typically not discussed in the reports, even though the produced current may be too small for practical applications, especially under modest temperature gradients [18,19,[21][22][23][24][25]27].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

A numerical study on the design trade-offs of a thin-film thermoelectric generator for large-area applications

Tappura

2018

Renewable Energy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Thin-film thermoelectric generators with a novel folding scheme are proposed for large-area, low energydensity applications. Both the electrical current and heat transfer are in the plane of the thermoelectric thinfilm, yet the heat transfer is across the plane of the modulesimilar to conventional bulk thermoelectric modules. With such designs, the heat leakage through the module itself can be minimized and the available temperature gradient maximized. Different from the previously reported corrugated thermoelectric generators, the proposed folding scheme enables high packing densities without compromising the thermal contact area to the heat source and sink. The significance of various thermal transport, or leakage, mechanisms in relation to power production is demonstrated for different packing densities and thicknesses of the module under heat sink-limited conditions. It is shown that the power factor is more important than ZT for predicting the power output of such thin-film devices. As very thin thermoelectric films are employed with modest temperature gradients, high aspect-ratio elements are needed to meet theusually ignoredrequirements of practical applications for the current. With the design trade-offs considered, the proposed devices may enable the exploitation of thermoelectric energy harvesting in newlarge-areaapplications at reasonable cost. KEYWORDS: thermoelectric generator; large-area TEG; thin-film, in-plane heat transfer; FEM simulations; computational TEG design © 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Renewable Energy. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.

show abstract

“…For α > 90°, approaching the designs of refs. [20][21][22][23][24], the density would decrease even more.…”

Section: B and C Enables Both High-density Te Modules And Good Thermalmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A numerical study on the design trade-offs of a thin-film thermoelectric generator for large-area applications

Tappura

2018

Renewable Energy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The material parameters of Bi2Te3 were taken from Ref. [22], while the other parameter values used in the simulations of Fig. 5 are listed in Table 1.…”

Section: Power Production Properties Of the Folded Thin-film Tegsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Large-area implementation and critical evaluation of the material and fabrication aspects of a thin-film thermoelectric generator based on aluminum-doped zinc oxide

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A large-area thermoelectric generator (TEG) utilizing a folded thin-film concept is implemented and the performance evaluated for near room temperature applications having modest temperature gradients (< 50 K). The TEGs with the area of ~0.33 m 2 are shown capable of powering a wireless sensor node of multiple sensors suitable e.g. for monitoring environmental variables in buildings. The TEGs are based on a transparent, non-toxic and abundant thermoelectric material, i.e. aluminium-doped zinc oxide (AZO), deposited on flexible substrates. After folding, both the electrical current and heat flux are in the plane of the thermoelectric thin-film. Heat leakage in the folded TEG is shown to be minimal (close to that of air), enabling sufficient temperature gradients without efficient heat sinks, contrary to the conventional TEGs having the thermal flux and electrical current perpendicular to the plane of the thermoelectric films. The long-term stability studies reveal that there are no significant changes in the electrical or thermoelectric properties of AZO over several months, while the contact resistance between AZO and silver ink is an issue exhibiting a continuous increase over time. The performance of the TEGs and technological implications in relation to a state-of-the-art thermoelectric material are further assessed via a computational study.

show abstract

Flexible Thermoelectric Materials and Devices

Prabhakar

Bahk

2018

Flexible Energy Conversion and Storage Devices

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Heat shrink formation of a corrugated thin film thermoelectric generator

Cited by 48 publications

References 33 publications

A numerical study on the design trade-offs of a thin-film thermoelectric generator for large-area applications

A numerical study on the design trade-offs of a thin-film thermoelectric generator for large-area applications

Large-area implementation and critical evaluation of the material and fabrication aspects of a thin-film thermoelectric generator based on aluminum-doped zinc oxide

Flexible Thermoelectric Materials and Devices

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About