Flexible thermoelectrics: from silver chalcogenides to full-inorganic devices

Flexible thermoelectrics: from silver chalcogenides to full-inorganic devices

Flexible thermoelectrics is a synergy of flexible electronics and thermoelectric energy conversion. To date, state-of-the-art thermoelectrics is based on inorganic semiconductors that afford high electron mobility but lack in mechanical flexibility. By contrast, organic materials are amply flexible...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energy & environmental science 2019-01, Vol.12 (1), p.2983-299
Main Authors: Liang, Jiasheng, Wang, Tuo, Qiu, Pengfei, Yang, Shiqi, Ming, Chen, Chen, Hongyi, Song, Qingfeng, Zhao, Kunpeng, Wei, Tian-Ran, Ren, Dudi, Sun, Yi-Yang, Shi, Xun, He, Jian, Chen, Lidong
Format: Article
Language:eng
Subjects:
Electron mobility
Electronic devices
Electronics industry
Energy conversion
Flexibility
Flexible components
Inorganic materials
Maximum power density
Mobility
Organic materials
Temperature gradients
Thermoelectricity
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Summary:Flexible thermoelectrics is a synergy of flexible electronics and thermoelectric energy conversion. To date, state-of-the-art thermoelectrics is based on inorganic semiconductors that afford high electron mobility but lack in mechanical flexibility. By contrast, organic materials are amply flexible but low in electrical mobility and power output; the inorganic-organic hybrid design is a viable material-level option but has critical device-level issues for practical application. Here, we reported high intrinsic flexibility and state-of-the-art figures of merit (up to 0.44 at 300 K and 0.63 at 450 K) in Ag 2 S-based inorganic materials, opening a new avenue of flexible thermoelectrics. In the flexible full-inorganic devices made of such Ag 2 S-based materials, high electrical mobility yielded a normalized maximum power density up to 0.08 W m −1 under a temperature difference of 20 K near room temperature, orders of magnitude higher than organic devices and organic-inorganic hybrid devices. These results promised an emerging paradigm and market of wearable thermoelectrics. Flexible thermoelectrics is a synergy of flexible electronics and thermoelectric energy conversion. In this work, we fabricated flexible full-inorganic thermoelectric power generation modules based on doped silver chalcogenides.
ISSN:1754-5692
1754-5706