Polymer gels with tunable ionic Seebeck coefficient for ultra-sensitive printed thermopilesShow others and affiliations
2019 (English)In: Nature Communications, E-ISSN 2041-1723, Vol. 10, article id 1093Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Measuring temperature and heat flux is important for regulating any physical, chemical, and biological processes. Traditional thermopiles can provide accurate and stable temperature reading but they are based on brittle inorganic materials with low Seebeck coefficient, and are difficult to manufacture over large areas. Recently, polymer electrolytes have been proposed for thermoelectric applications because of their giant ionic Seebeck coefficient, high flexibility and ease of manufacturing. However, the materials reported to date have positive Seebeck coefficients, hampering the design of ultra-sensitive ionic thermopiles. Here we report an “ambipolar” ionic polymer gel with giant negative ionic Seebeck coefficient. The latter can be tuned from negative to positive by adjusting the gel composition. We show that the ion-polymer matrix interaction is crucial to control the sign and magnitude of the ionic Seebeck coefficient. The ambipolar gel can be easily screen printed, enabling large-area device manufacturing at low cost.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Nature Publishing Group, 2019. Vol. 10, article id 1093
Keywords [en]
Ionic Thermopiles; thermoelectric; screen printing; ionic liquid
National Category
Other Physics Topics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-154943DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-08930-7ISI: 000460410800001PubMedID: 30842422OAI: oai:DiVA.org:liu-154943DiVA, id: diva2:1294209
Note
Funding agencies: Swedish research council [2016-03979, 2015-05070]; Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems [2015-04859]; Advanced Functional Materials Center at Linkoping University (Faculty Grant SFO-Mat-LiU) [2009 00971]; United States National Science Found
2019-03-062019-03-062023-12-06Bibliographically approved