High Performance of p-n Junction Thermoelectric Device for Wearable Application

The evolution of wearable technology with energy harvesting has gathered significant interest in recent years. A wearable thermoelectric device (WTED) harvests energy by tapping the electricity between the human body and ambient temperature. However, the performances of WTED modules can be improved by different p-n structural engineering such as with and without metallic layer insert, inverted L shape, p-p-n, and p-n-n module are designed and analyzed in this study. Each p-n WTED comprises a single pair of the p-n type consisting of bismuth telluride, each with a dimension of 1.4 mm thick connected in series. Open-circuit voltage and the low internal resistance of their geometry were measured for each class using a computational method. For the first time, inverted L shape and metallic insert of h(i)/h = 0.1 mm p-n junction WTED can generate a minimum to the maximum output power of 0.23 to13.10 mW for a temperature difference of 10 to 80 K, which is higher than the conventional WTED along with metal contact at the hot side. Furthermore, by considering the enhanced output performance, WTED can able to power wearable electronic applications.