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3D printing of shape-conformable thermoelectric materials using all-inorganic Bi2Te3-based inks

Nature Energy volume 3, pages 301–309 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Thermoelectric energy conversion offers a unique solution for generating electricity from waste heat. However, despite recent improvements in the efficiency of thermoelectric materials, the widespread application of thermoelectric generators has been hampered by challenges in fabricating thermoelectric materials with appropriate dimensions to perfectly fit heat sources. Herein, we report an extrusion-based three-dimensional printing method to produce thermoelectric materials with geometries suitable for heat sources. All-inorganic viscoelastic inks were synthesized using Sb2Te3 chalcogenidometallate ions as inorganic binders for Bi2Te3-based particles. Three-dimensional printed materials with various geometries showed homogenous thermoelectric properties, and their dimensionless figure-of-merit values of 0.9 (p-type) and 0.6 (n-type) were comparable to the bulk values. Conformal cylindrical thermoelectric generators made of 3D-printed half rings mounted on an alumina pipe were studied both experimentally and computationally. Simulations show that the power output of the conformal, shape-optimized generator is higher than that of conventional planar generators.

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Fig. 1: All-inorganic TE inks and printing.
Fig. 2: Structural characterizations of the 3D-printed TE samples.
Fig. 3: TE properties of the 3D-printed samples.
Fig. 4: Conformal TEG with the 3D-printed n-type and p-type half rings.
Fig. 5: Comparative simulation study of the conformal and planar TEGs on an alumina pipe.
Fig. 6: Effect of geometric parameters on the conformal cylindrical TEG.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support from the R&D Convergence Program of National Research Council of Science and Technology (NST) of Republic of Korea, and the Center for Advanced Meta-Materials (CAMM) as a Global Frontier Project (NRF-2016M3A6B3936652), Leading Foreign Research Institute Recruitment Program (No. 2017K1A4A3015437), the Nano Material Technology Development Program (No. 2016M3A7B4900044), and individual research program (NRF-2016R1A2B4007452) through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) of Republic of Korea.

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  1. Fredrick Kim and Beomjin Kwon contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, Republic of Korea

    Fredrick Kim, Youngho Eom, Sangmin Park, Seungki Jo, Sung Hoon Park, Han Gi Chae & Jae Sung Son

  2. Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Beomjin Kwon & William P. King

  3. Thermoelectric Conversion Research Center, Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute, Changwon, Republic of Korea

    Ji Eun Lee, Bong-Seo Kim, Hye Jin Im & Min Ho Lee

  4. Powder Technology Department, Korea Institute of Materials Science, Changwon, Republic of Korea

    Tae Sik Min & Kyung Tae Kim

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Contributions

F.K., B.K. and J.S.S. designed the experiments, analysed the data and wrote the paper. F.K., S.P., S.J., T.S.M., K.T.K. and S.H.P. carried out the synthesis and basic characterization of the materials. Y. E. and H.G.C. performed the characterization of the rheological properties. F.K., J.E.L., B.-S.K., H.J.I., M.H.L. and J.S.S. carried out the fabrication and measurement of the TEGs. B.K. and W.P.K. performed the simulation studies of the TEGs. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jae Sung Son.

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Supplementary Figures 1–12, Supplementary Tables 1–2, Supplementary Discussion and Supplementary References

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Extrusion-based 3D printing of a thermoelectric cuboid

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Kim, F., Kwon, B., Eom, Y. et al. 3D printing of shape-conformable thermoelectric materials using all-inorganic Bi2Te3-based inks. Nat Energy 3, 301–309 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-017-0071-2

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