Inkjet Printed Large-Area Flexible Few-Layer Graphene Thermoelectrics

Taneli Juntunen, Henri Jussila, Mikko Ruoho, Shouhu Liu, Guohua Hu, Tom Albrow-Owen, Leonard W.T. Ng, Richard C.T. Howe, Tawfique Hasan*, Zhipei Sun, Ilkka Tittonen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

115 Citations (Scopus)
222 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Graphene-based organic nanocomposites have ascended as promising candidates for thermoelectric energy conversion. In order to adopt existing scalable printing methods for developing thermostable graphene-based thermoelectric devices, optimization of both the material ink and the thermoelectric properties of the resulting films are required. Here, inkjet-printed large-area flexible graphene thin films with outstanding thermoelectric properties are reported. The thermal and electronic transport properties of the films reveal the so-called phonon-glass electron-crystal character (i.e., electrical transport behavior akin to that of few-layer graphene flakes with quenched thermal transport arising from the disordered nanoporous structure). As a result, the all-graphene films show a room-temperature thermoelectric power factor of 18.7 µW m−1 K−2, representing over a threefold improvement to previous solution-processed all-graphene structures. The demonstration of inkjet-printed thermoelectric devices underscores the potential for future flexible, scalable, and low-cost thermoelectric applications, such as harvesting energy from body heat in wearable applications.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1800480
JournalAdvanced Functional Materials
Volume28
Issue number22
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 May 2018
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • graphene
  • inkjet printing
  • large-area thermoelectrics

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