As commercial interest in flexible power-conversion devices increases, the demand is ever growing for high-performance alternatives to brittle inorganic thermoelectric materials. As one of the possible candidates, carbon nanotube yarn (CNTY) shows great potential for use in flexible thermoelectric (TE) materials because of its high electrical conductivity and controllable thermopower. We demonstrate a flexible and ultralight TE generator (TEG) based on CNTY with excellent TE performance. A flexible TEG based on 60 pairs of n- and p-doped CNTY shows the maximum power density of 10.85 and 697 μW/g at temperature differences of 5 and 40 K, respectively, which are the highest values among reported flexible TEGs. Our results provide a new direction for the preparation of flexible/or wearable power conversion devices.

High-performance flexible thermoelectric generator based on carbon nanotube yarn

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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