High-performance and Compact-designed Flexible Thermoelectric Modules Enabled by a Reticulate Carbon Nanotube Architecture

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2017 Mar 25

PMID 28337987

Citations 32

Authors

Wenbin Zhou

Qingxia Fan

Qiang Zhang

Le Cai

Kewei Li

Xiaogang Gu

Feng Yang

Nan Zhang

Yanchun Wang

Huaping Liu

Weiya Zhou

Sishen Xie

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

It is a great challenge to substantially improve the practical performance of flexible thermoelectric modules due to the absence of air-stable n-type thermoelectric materials with high-power factor. Here an excellent flexible n-type thermoelectric film is developed, which can be conveniently and rapidly prepared based on the as-grown carbon nanotube continuous networks with high conductivity. The optimum n-type film exhibits ultrahigh power factor of ∼1,500 μW m K and outstanding stability in air without encapsulation. Inspired by the findings, we design and successfully fabricate the compact-configuration flexible TE modules, which own great advantages compared with the conventional π-type configuration modules and well integrate the superior thermoelectric properties of p-type and n-type carbon nanotube films resulting in a markedly high performance. Moreover, the research results are highly scalable and also open opportunities for the large-scale production of flexible thermoelectric modules.

Citing Articles

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