Effect of Microwave Processing and Glass Inclusions on Thermoelectric Properties of P-Type Bismuth Antimony Telluride Alloys for Wearable Applications

Amin Nozariasbmarz and Daryoosh Vashaee
Additional contact information
Amin Nozariasbmarz: Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Monteith Research Center, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA
Daryoosh Vashaee: Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Monteith Research Center, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27606, USA

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 17, 1-12

Abstract: Depending on the application of bismuth telluride thermoelectric materials in cooling, waste heat recovery, or wearable electronics, their material properties, and geometrical dimensions should be designed to optimize their performance. Recently, thermoelectric materials have gained a lot of interest in wearable electronic devices for body heat harvesting and cooling purposes. For efficient wearable electronic devices, thermoelectric materials with optimum properties, i.e., low thermal conductivity, high Seebeck coefficient, and high thermoelectric figure-of-merit (zT) at room temperature, are demanded. In this paper, we investigate the effect of glass inclusion, microwave processing, and annealing on the synthesis of high-performance p-type (Bi x Sb 1−x ) 2 Te 3 nanocomposites, optimized specially for body heat harvesting and body cooling applications. Our results show that glass inclusion could enhance the room temperature Seebeck coefficient by more than 10% while maintaining zT the same. Moreover, the combination of microwave radiation and post-annealing enables a 25% enhancement of zT at room temperature. A thermoelectric generator wristband, made of the developed materials, generates 300 μW power and 323 mV voltage when connected to the human body. Consequently, MW processing provides a new and effective way of synthesizing p-type (Bi x Sb 1−x ) 2 Te 3 alloys with optimum transport properties.

Keywords: thermoelectric materials; microwave processing; bismuth telluride; nanocomposites; body heat harvesting; glass inclusion; annealing; wearable cooler (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/17/4524/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/17/4524/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:17:p:4524-:d:407112

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().