Screen Printed BiTe Thermoelectric Devices

Thermoelectric devices can be used for a wide variety of applications; however, their cost, ease of manufacture and how they can be applied is a barrier to their widespread application for waste heat recovery, energy harvesting and heatflux sensing the latter being particularly important for embedded electronics applications. We propose to determine the feasibility of a low cost printing process for the production of complex arrays of p n junctions using nano Bismuth Telluride and Antimony Telluride powders. These arrays will be sintered and electrically connected with screen printed and sintered nano silver. It may be possible (with a suitable number of junctions) to generate output voltages of circa 50mV that can be utilised by systems with modest sensitivity thereby reducing overall system cost.