Manipulating Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Arrays for Flexible Photothermoelectric Devices

Heng Wang; Rui Wang; Cheng Chen; Zhan Zhou; Jian-Wei Liu

doi:10.1021/jacsau.2c00189

Manipulating Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Arrays for Flexible Photothermoelectric Devices

JACS Au. 2022 Sep 8;2(10):2269-2276. doi: 10.1021/jacsau.2c00189. eCollection 2022 Oct 24.

Authors

Heng Wang¹, Rui Wang¹, Cheng Chen¹, Zhan Zhou¹, Jian-Wei Liu¹

Affiliation

¹ Division of Nanomaterials & Chemistry, Hefei National Research Center for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Department of Chemistry, Institute of Biomimetic Materials & Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.

Abstract

Flexible photothermoelectric (PTE) devices possess great application prospects in the field of light energy and thermoelectric energy harvesting which are some of the cornerstones of modern green renewable energy power generation. However, the low efficiency of PTE materials and lack of suitable manufacturing processes remain an impediment to restrict its rapid development. Here, we designed a flexible PTE device by printing a highly integrated single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) array at intervals that were surface-functionalized with poly(acrylic acid) and poly(ethylene imine) as p-n heterofilms. After the introduction of a mask to give a selective light illumination and taking advantage of the photothermal effect of SWCNTs, a remarkable temperature gradient along the printed SWCNTs and a considerable power density of 1.3 μW/cm² can be achieved. Meanwhile, both experimental data and COMSOL theoretical simulations were adopted to optimize the performance of our device, showing new opportunities for new generation flexible PTE devices.