Sticky Thermoelectric Materials to Fabricate Flexible Peltier Sheets

Flexible Peltier sheets benefit to fit complex objects like human bodies and deliver cold energy efficiently because the amount of heat transfer increases with the contact area. To make a solid Peltier plate into a flexible sheet, however, we need a new material with a high Seebeck coefficient like inorganic materials and a low thermal conductivity like organic materials to generate and maintain the temperature difference between the top and bottom sides of the sheet. Herein, we employ Bi₂Te₃-based sticky thermoelectric (TE) materials due to the following two features: First, sticky TE materials have been inversely designed to mass-produce flexible TE generation sheets through lamination or roll-to-roll processes without using electric conductive adhesives. Second, sticky TE materials have been demonstrated as an inorganic/organic hybrid material of TE particles and low-volatilizable organic solvents to show Seebeck coefficients based on the TE particles and low thermal conductivities based on the organic solvents. In this presentation, we discuss the relation between Peltier performance and electric resistance.