High Performance and Flexible Polyvinylpyrrolidone/Ag/Ag2Te Ternary Composite Film for Thermoelectric Power Generator

Qiufeng Meng; Yang Qiu; Kefeng Cai; Yufei Ding; Mengdi Wang; Hongting Pu; Qin Yao; Lidong Chen; Jiaqing He

doi:10.1021/acsami.9b11217

High Performance and Flexible Polyvinylpyrrolidone/Ag/Ag₂Te Ternary Composite Film for Thermoelectric Power Generator

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2019 Sep 11;11(36):33254-33262. doi: 10.1021/acsami.9b11217. Epub 2019 Aug 27.

Authors

Qiufeng Meng^{1

2

3}, Yang Qiu⁴, Kefeng Cai¹, Yufei Ding¹, Mengdi Wang^{2

5}, Hongting Pu¹, Qin Yao², Lidong Chen², Jiaqing He⁴

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Advanced Civil Engineering Materials, Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science & Engineering , Tongji University , 4800 Caoan Road , Shanghai 201804 , China.
² State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure , Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Shanghai 200050 , China.
³ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100049 , China.
⁴ Physics Department , Southern University of Science and Technology , 1088 XueYuan Avenue , Shenzhen 518055 , China.
⁵ Shanghai Tech University , 393 Huaxia Road , Shanghai 201210 , China.

PMID: 31411857
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b11217

Abstract

In this work, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) coated Ag-rich Ag₂Te nanowires (NWs) were synthesized by a wet chemical method using PVP coated Te NWs as templates, and a flexible PVP/Ag/Ag₂Te ternary composite film on a nylon membrane was prepared by vacuum assisted filtration, followed by heat treatment. TEM and STEM observations of the focused ion beam prepared sample reveal that the composite film shows a porous network-like structure and that the Ag and Ag₂Te exist as nanoparticles and NWs, respectively, both bonded with PVP. The Ag nanoparticles are formed by separation of the Ag-rich Ag₂Te NWs during the heat treatment. For the composite film starting from a Ag/Te initial molar ratio of 6:1, a high power factor of 216.5 μW/mK² is achieved at 300 K, and it increases to 370.1 μW/mK² at 393 K. Bending tests demonstrate excellent flexibility of the hybrid film. A thermoelectric (TE) prototype composed of five legs of the hybrid film is assembled, and a maximum output power of 469 nW is obtained at a temperature gradient of 39.6 K, corresponding to a maximum power density of 341 μW/cm². This work provides an effective route to a composite film with high TE performance and excellent flexibility for wearable TE generators.

Keywords: AgTe; flexible film; generator; polyvinylpyrrolidone; thermoelectric.