Dispenser printed composite thermoelectric thick films for thermoelectric generator applications

Date

2011-02-04

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Deepa Madan, Alic Chen, Paul K. Wright, and James W. Evans, "Dispenser printed composite thermoelectric thick films for thermoelectric generator applications", Journal of Applied Physics 109, 034904 (2011) https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3544501.

Rights

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Deepa Madan, Alic Chen, Paul K. Wright, and James W. Evans, "Dispenser printed composite thermoelectric thick films for thermoelectric generator applications", Journal of Applied Physics 109, 034904 (2011) https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3544501. and may be found at https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.3544501.

Subjects

Abstract

This paper describes novel processes for preparing thermoelectric composite materials compatible with thick film dispenser printing fabrication processes. Optimization of process parameters to improve thermoelectric properties is introduced. We explore the use of n-type Bi2Te3 and p-type Sb2Te3 materials to achieve properties suitable for use in low cost high aspect ratio microscale thermoelectric generators. Printable thermoelectric inks consisted of dispersed semiconductor powders in an epoxy resin system. Thick films were printed on glass substrates and cured at temperatures ranging from 150 to 350 °C. The best achievable power factors for n-type Bi2Te3-epoxy and p-type Sb2Te3-epoxy composite films were 1.5×10−4 W/m K2 and 8.4×10−4 W/m K2, respectively. Figure of merit (ZT) values for n-type Bi2Te3-epoxy and p-type Sb2Te3-epoxy composites were 0.16 and 0.41, respectively, which are much higher than previously reported ZT values for composite thermoelectric materials.