Modelling, fabrication and experimental testing of an heat sink free wearable thermoelectric generator

Thermoelectric pastes of stoichiometric Sb2Te3 and Bi2Te3 were prepared, characterized and used as active materials to fabricate a flexible heat sink free thermoelectric generator (TEG). The module was designed to be coupled to a 80 mV start-up input voltage fully electrical DC-DC converter. Although practical aspects and technological limitations led to a not optimal dimensioning of the device, an improvement of its thermoelectric performance might be obtained by including an additional thick film metal layer on the two sides of TEG, as demonstrated by Finite Element Analysis (FEA) results. The designed thermopile consists of 450 thermocouples realized by blade coating of p- and n-type materials into 2 mm tall vertical cavities of a pre-patterned Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) through-holes layer of total area 98 x 98 mm(2).