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

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

221 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 languageEnglish
Article number1093
JournalNature Communications
Volume10
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1 2019

Bibliographical note

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

Funding

We acknowledge the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation (project \u201CTail of the sun\u201D), the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (Synergy project), the Swedish research council (project \u201CNext generation organic solar cells\u201D and Grant No. 2016\u201303979, and Grant No. 2015-05070), Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (Grant No. 2015\u201304859), the Swedish Energy Agency, the Advanced Functional Materials Center at Link\u00F6ping University (Faculty Grant SFO-Mat-LiU No 2009 00971), the Swedish NMR Centre, the United States National Science Foundation Grant (DMR-1262261), VINNOVA (2015\u201304859), \u00C5Forsk Foundation (18\u2013351 and 18\u2013313). We also acknowledge conceptualized.tech for helping with figures and images.

FundersFunder number
Swedish NMR Centre
Stiftelsen för Strategisk Forskning
Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse
Energimyndigheten
U.S. Department of Energy Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project Oak Ridge National Laboratory Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment National Science Foundation National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center National Natural Science Foundation of China1262261
U.S. Department of Energy Chinese Academy of Sciences Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology Project Oak Ridge National Laboratory Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment National Science Foundation National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center National Natural Science Foundation of China
VINNOVA04859, 2015–04859
VINNOVA
Advanced Functional Materials Center at Linköping University2009 00971
Stiftelsen Åforsk18–351, 18–313
Stiftelsen Åforsk
Vetenskapsrådet2015-05070, 2016–03979
Vetenskapsrådet

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Chemistry
    • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
    • General Physics and Astronomy

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