Photonic Curing Enables Ultrarapid Processing of Highly Conducting β-Cu2-δSe Printed Thermoelectric Films in Less Than 10 ms

Md Mofasser Mallick; Leonard Franke; Andres Georg Rösch; Holger Geßwein; Yolita M Eggeler; Uli Lemmer

doi:10.1021/acsomega.2c00412

Photonic Curing Enables Ultrarapid Processing of Highly Conducting β-Cu_2-δSe Printed Thermoelectric Films in Less Than 10 ms

ACS Omega. 2022 Mar 15;7(12):10695-10700. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.2c00412. eCollection 2022 Mar 29.

Authors

Md Mofasser Mallick¹, Leonard Franke¹, Andres Georg Rösch¹, Holger Geßwein², Yolita M Eggeler³, Uli Lemmer^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Light Technology Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
² Institute for Applied Materials, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany.
³ Laboratory for Electron Microscopy, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
⁴ Institute of Microstructure Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany.

Abstract

It has been a challenge to obtain high electrical conductivity in inorganic printed thermoelectric (TE) films due to their high interfacial resistance. In this work, we report a facile synthesis process of Cu-Se-based printable ink for screen printing. A highly conducting TE β-Cu_2-δSe phase forms in the screen-printed Cu-Se-based film through ≤10 ms sintering using photonic-curing technology, minimizing the interfacial resistance. This enables overcoming the major challenges associated with printed thermoelectrics: (a) to obtain the desired phase, (b) to attain high electrical conductivity, and (c) to obtain flexibility. Furthermore, the photonic-curing process reduces the synthesis time of the TE β-Cu_2-δSe film from several days to a few milliseconds. The sintered film exhibits a remarkably high electrical conductivity of ∼3710 S cm^-1 with a TE power factor of ∼100 μW m^-1 K^-2. The fast processing and high conductivity of the film could also be potentially useful for different printed electronics applications.