Nanowires as Building Blocks to Fabricate Flexible Thermoelectric Fabric: The Case of Copper Telluride Nanowires

A general approach to fabricate nanowires based inorganic/organic composite flexible thermoelectric fabric using a simple and efficacious five-step vacuum filtration process is proposed. As an excellent example, the performance of freestanding flexible thermoelectric thin film using copper telluride nanowires/polyvinylidene fluoride (Cu1.75Te NWs/PVDF = 2:1) as building block is demonstrated. By burying the Cu1.75Te NWs into the PVDF polymer agent, the flexible fabric exhibits room-temperature Seebeck coefficient and electric conductivity of 9.6 μV/K and 2490 S/cm, respectively, resulting in a power factor of 23 μW/(mK(2)) that is comparable to the bulk counterpart. Furthermore, this NW-based flexible fabric can endure hundreds of cycles of bending tests without significant performance degradation.