Design and Fabrication of Wearable Thermoelectric Generator Device for Heat Harvesting

This letter presents a novel wearable thermoelectric generator (TEG) device for powering electronics by harvesting human body heat. The structural design of the TEG device consists of 12 thermoelectric modules, which are connected by copper strips electrically in series and thermally in parallel. A flexible printed circuit board with special hollows' design is utilized as the bottom electrodes and substrate to enhance the flexibility of the device. The fabrication procedure to make this TEG device is then described. The hot- and cold-sides of TEG are soldered by a thin layer of Sn96.5Ag3Cu0.5and Sn42Bi58, respectively. Therefore, the developed TEG device features both high flexibility and excellent performance for heat harvesting. Experimental characterization results demonstrated that the TEG device can achieve 23 μW power and 4.75 μW/cm2power density at a temperature difference of 35 K. After wearing on human wrist, this TEG device can generate an open-circuit voltage of 10.5 mV, and the ability of using this TEG for powering a light emitting diode has been demonstrated. Results indicated that the developed wearable TEG device could be used for powering of wearable electronics and/or sensors.