Spray-on thermoelectric energy harvester
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MRS Advances © 2018 Materials Research Society DOI: 10.1557/adv.2018.654
Spray-on thermoelectric energy harvester Robert E. Peale,1,2 Seth Calhoun,1 Nagendra Dhakal,1 and Isaiah O. Oladeji1,3 Francisco J. González1,4 1
Physics, University of Central Florida, Orlando FL 32816
2
Truventic LLC, 1209 W. Gore St. Orlando FL 32805
3
SISOM Thin Film LLC, 1209 W. Gore St. Orlando FL 32805
4
Terahertz Science and Technology National Lab (LANCyTT), Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Mexico
ABSTRACT
Thermoelectric (TE) thin films have promise for harvesting electrical energy from waste heat. We demonstrate TE materials and thermocouples deposited by aqueous spray deposition on glass. The n-type material was CdO doped with Mn and Sn. Two p-type materials were investigated, namely PbS with co-growth of CdS and doped with Na and Na2CoO4. Seebeck coefficients, resistivity, and power generation for thermocouples were characterized.
INTRODUCTION Thin-film thermoelectric energy harvesters have been suggested for long-flightduration un-manned aerial vehicles [1]. Temperature gradients of ~1 deg C per cm occur along aircraft skins [2]. Waste heating of vehicle exhaust systems can give surface lateral temperature gradients exceeding 2 deg C per cm [3]. Such offer opportunity for energy harvesting using thin film thermocouples applied as paint-like coatings. This paper investigates thermoelectric thin films prepared by an aqueous spray process.
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Power generation from stoves and lamps [4,5] has potentially large market and significant humanitarian impact in developing countries, for charging Li batteries and operating medical devices during night time hours. Such a TE power generator is commercially available [6]. The ability to spray-coat complex objects, whose surfaces have temperature gradients resulting from standard use, has advantage of distributed lowcost manufacturing. CdO is the n-type thermoelectric metal oxide material considered here [7-9]. The first p-type thermoelectric material we considered was the metal chalcogenide PbS, which we had grown previously for infrared detection [10]. We doped with Na and cogrew CdS nano-inclusions [11]. However, difficulties in co-processing PbS on the same substrate with CdO led us to consider Na2CoO4 (NCO) [12, 13]. NCO and CdO are both stable against oxidation in air. For purposes of mass production of useful power generators, we explored photolithographic patterning. EXPERIMENTAL DETAILS The aqueous-spray thin-film growth method is Streaming Process for Electrodeless Electrochemical Deposition (SPEED). Films were grown in ~ 1 cm wide stripes on a 50 mm x 50 mm x 1.1 mm borofloat glass substrate in p- and n-type pairs. The chemistry for growing CdO films by SPEED is similar to that for SnO2 [13]. A little Sn promotes growth of CdO. Mn wa
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