Polymer gels with tunable ionic Seebeck coefficient for ultra-sensitive printed thermopiles

Dan Zhao; Anna Martinelli; Andreas Willfahrt; Thomas Fischer; Diana Bernin; Zia Ullah Khan; Maryam Shahi; Joseph Brill; Magnus P. Jonsson; Simone Fabiano; Xavier Crispin

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-08930-7

Polymer gels with tunable ionic Seebeck coefficient for ultra-sensitive printed thermopiles

Dan Zhao, Anna Martinelli, Andreas Willfahrt, Thomas Fischer, Diana Bernin, Zia Ullah Khan, Maryam Shahi, Joseph Brill, Magnus P. Jonsson, Simone Fabiano, Xavier Crispin

Physics And Astronomy

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

120 Scopus citations

Abstract

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.

Original language	English
Article number	1093
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	10
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-08930-7
State	Published - Dec 1 2019

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We acknowledge the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation (project “Tail of the sun”), the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (Synergy project), the Swedish research council (project “Next generation organic solar cells” and Grant No. 2016–03979, and Grant No. 2015-05070), Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (Grant No. 2015–04859), the Swedish Energy Agency, the Advanced Functional Materials Center at Linköping University (Faculty Grant SFO-Mat-LiU No 2009 00971), the Swedish NMR Centre, the United States National Science Foundation Grant (DMR-1262261), VINNOVA (2015–04859), ÅForsk Foundation (18–351 and 18–313). We also acknowledge conceptualized.tech for helping with figures and images.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Chemistry (all)
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (all)
Physics and Astronomy (all)

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10.1038/s41467-019-08930-7

Cite this

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abstract = "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.",

author = "Dan Zhao and Anna Martinelli and Andreas Willfahrt and Thomas Fischer and Diana Bernin and Khan, {Zia Ullah} and Maryam Shahi and Joseph Brill and Jonsson, {Magnus P.} and Simone Fabiano and Xavier Crispin",

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AU - Shahi, Maryam

AU - Brill, Joseph

AU - Jonsson, Magnus P.

AU - Fabiano, Simone

AU - Crispin, Xavier

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Polymer gels with tunable ionic Seebeck coefficient for ultra-sensitive printed thermopiles

Abstract

Bibliographical note

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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