Materials, Devices and Systems for Thermoelectric Personal Cooling

The global warming has been causing extreme heat events that are increasingly more frequent and intense and impacting a greater percentage of the world population. They are especially devastating to at-risk populations and vulnerable communities, such as outdoor workers (e.g., in agricultural, construction, and transportation sectors); individuals with underlying health conditions; those who are unhoused or who live in housing with inadequate cooling. Despite public health campaigns to provide resources, emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and fatalities from heat stress have been increasing during extreme heat events in both developing and developed regions around the world.

An efficient personal active cooling strategy can mitigate heat stress by regulating the skin temperature within the thermal comfort zone. Thermoelectric cooling offers an appealing option due to its solid-state nature, light weight, and ease of temperature control. There have been a large amount of work aiming to develop flexible and wearable thermoelectric devices suitable for personal cooling applications. We will present recent progress in this area, including the material, design, and fabrication of flexible thermoelectric devices. Furthermore, besides thermoelectric heat pumping, a complete personal cooling thermal envelope also needs to consider other components with thermal functionalities, such as fabric and heat sinks, which is an under-studied topic within the context of thermoelectric personal cooling. We will discuss the potential opportunities and challenges on this topic, such as thermally conductive and flexible fabrics, efficient and wearable heat sinks, and combined thermoelectric and evaporative cooling.