High‐Performance Flexible Thermoelectric Devices Based on All‐Inorganic Hybrid Films for Harvesting Low‐Grade Heat

Abstract

Abstract The fabrication of a flexible thermoelectric (TE) device that contains flexible, all‐inorganic hybrid thin films (p‐type single‐wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs)/Sb 2 Te 3 and n‐type reduced graphene oxide (RGO)/Bi 2 Te 3 ) is reported. The optimized power factors of the p‐type and n‐type hybrid thin films at ambient temperature are about 55 and 108 µW m −1 K −2 , respectively. The high performance of these films that are fabricated through the combination of vacuum filtration and annealing can be attributed to their planar orientation and network structure. In addition, a TE device, with 10 couples of legs, shows an output power of 23.6 µW at a temperature gradient of 70 K. A prototype of an integrated photovoltaic‐TE (PV‐TE) device demonstrates the ability to harvest low‐grade “waste” thermal energy from the human body and solar irradiation. The flexible TE and PV‐TE device have great potential in wearable energy harvesting and management.