Issue 14, 2020

Recent advances in printable thermoelectric devices: materials, printing techniques, and applications

Abstract

Thermoelectric devices have great potential as a sustainable energy conversion technology to harvest waste heat and perform spot cooling with high reliability. However, most of the thermoelectric devices use toxic and expensive materials, which limits their application. These materials also require high-temperature fabrication processes, limiting their compatibility with flexible, bio-compatible substrate. Printing electronics is an exciting new technique for fabrication that has enabled a wide array of biocompatible and conformable systems. Being able to print thermoelectric devices allows them to be custom made with much lower cost for their specific application. Significant effort has been directed toward utilizing polymers and other bio-friendly materials for low-cost, lightweight, and flexible thermoelectric devices. Fortunately, many of these materials can be printed using low-temperature printing processes, enabling their fabrication on biocompatible substrates. This review aims to report the recent progress in developing high performance thermoelectric inks for various printing techniques. In addition to the usual thermoelectric performance measures, we also consider the attributes of flexibility and the processing temperatures. Finally, recent advancement of printed device structures is discussed which aims to maximize the temperature difference across the junctions.

Graphical abstract: Recent advances in printable thermoelectric devices: materials, printing techniques, and applications

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
22 Nov 2019
Accepted
03 Feb 2020
First published
26 Feb 2020
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2020,10, 8421-8434

Recent advances in printable thermoelectric devices: materials, printing techniques, and applications

M. S. Hossain, T. Li, Y. Yu, J. Yong, J. Bahk and E. Skafidas, RSC Adv., 2020, 10, 8421 DOI: 10.1039/C9RA09801A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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