Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting from Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Alkali-Activated Nanocomposites Produced from Industrial Waste Materials

Maliheh Davoodabadi; Ioanna Vareli; Marco Liebscher; Lazaros Tzounis; Massimo Sgarzi; Alkiviadis S Paipetis; Jian Yang; Gianaurelio Cuniberti; Viktor Mechtcherine

doi:10.3390/nano11051095

Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting from Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Alkali-Activated Nanocomposites Produced from Industrial Waste Materials

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2021 Apr 23;11(5):1095. doi: 10.3390/nano11051095.

Authors

Maliheh Davoodabadi^{1

2

3

4}, Ioanna Vareli⁵, Marco Liebscher¹, Lazaros Tzounis⁵, Massimo Sgarzi^{2

3}, Alkiviadis S Paipetis⁵, Jian Yang⁴, Gianaurelio Cuniberti^{2

3

6

7}, Viktor Mechtcherine¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Construction Materials, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany.
² Institute for Materials Science and Max Bergmann Centre of Biomaterials, Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany.
³ Dresden Center for Nanoanalysis (DCN), Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany.
⁴ Department of Civil Engineering, School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Ioannina, 45110 Ioannina, Greece.
⁶ Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (CfAED), Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany.
⁷ Dresden Center for Computational Materials Science (DCMS), Dresden University of Technology, 01069 Dresden, Germany.

Abstract

A waste-originated one-part alkali-activated nanocomposite is introduced herein as a novel thermoelectric material. For this purpose, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) were utilized as nanoinclusions to create an electrically conductive network within the investigated alkali-activated construction material. Thermoelectric and microstructure characteristics of SWCNT-alkali-activated nanocomposites were assessed after 28 days. Nanocomposites with 1.0 wt.% SWCNTs exhibited a multifunctional behavior, a combination of structural load-bearing, electrical conductivity, and thermoelectric response. These nanocomposites (1.0 wt.%) achieved the highest thermoelectric performance in terms of power factor (PF), compared to the lower SWCNTs' incorporations, namely 0.1 and 0.5 wt.%. The measured electrical conductivity (σ) and Seebeck coefficient (S) were 1660 S·m^-1 and 15.8 µV·K^-1, respectively, which led to a power factor of 0.414 μW·m^-1·K^-2. Consequently, they have been utilized as the building block of a thermoelectric generator (TEG) device, which demonstrated a maximum power output (P_out) of 0.695 µW, with a power density (PD) of 372 nW·m^-2, upon exposure to a temperature gradient of 60 K. The presented SWCNT-alkali-activated nanocomposites could establish the pathway towards waste thermal energy harvesting and future sustainable civil engineering structures.

Keywords: alkali-activated nanocomposites; green construction; multifunctional waste materials; single-walled carbon nanotubes; thermal energy harvesting; thermoelectric generator.

Grants and funding

T1EDK-03482/Greek national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation, under the call RESEARCH-CREATE-INNOVATE