Investigation of seebeck effect in ZnO nanowires for micropower generation in autonomous sensor systems

The Seebeck effect of ZnO nanowires has been investigated with the future aim to build thermoelectric devices based on nanowire arrays for energy harvesting and potential use in low-power portable electronics and autonomous sensor systems. Bundles of ZnO nanowires have been deposited on alumina substrates by a thermal evaporation process. The ZnO nanowires have been characterized by means of a purposely-developed experimental set-up, showing a negative Seebeck coefficient as for n-type semiconductors. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media.