Nanoengineering Approach toward High Power Factor Ag₂Se/Se Composite Films for Flexible Thermoelectric Generators

Abstract

Herein, a flexible Ag 2 Se/Se composite film with a high power factor has been fabricated on a nylon membrane. The film has a high density and contains well-crystallized Ag 2 Se grains and embedded Se nanoinclusions, which exhibits not only excellent flexibility but also a comparably large room-temperature power factor and Seebeck coefficient of up to 2023 μW m −1 K −2 and −155 μV K −1 , respectively. The high Seebeck coefficient is ascribed to the energy-filtering effect as caused by the Se/Ag 2 Se heterointerface. The assembled flexible thermoelectric generator (4-leg) exhibits a maximum output power of 1135 nW and a power density of up to 16.4 W m −2 when the applied temperature difference is 30 K. This work offers a feasible method to design high-performance and lowcost flexible thermoelectric generators used for wearable electronics.

Finite Element Analysis and Design of a Flexible Thermoelectric Generator with a Rhombus Gap Structure

“…Due to the increased output power, the power density rose from 2215 to 2573 μW/cm 2 and from 2573 to 2929 μW/cm 2 at a temperature gradient of 30 K when comparing E/A-TEG with E/A-ReTEG and E/A-ReTEG with E/A-RhTEG. The power density of E/A-RhTEG reached 2929 μW/cm 2 , which outperforms the reported f-TEGs in Figure h. − Additionally, as shown in Figure i, the internal resistances of different f-TEGs demonstrated excellent stability under different temperature gradients. The internal resistances remained virtually unchanged across different f-TEGs, highlighting the advantages of the production process.…”