Excellent transverse power generation and cooling performances of artificially tilted thermoelectric film devices

Large transverse output voltage of transverse thermoelectric film devices is key for their important applications. Currently, the transverse output voltage is only several to tens of μV·K−1 due to the great challenge that multilayer films with a nanometer-scale thickness are tilted in transverse thermoelectric film devices. Herein, a novel misaligned mask method is developed to low-costly fabricate artificially tilted thermoelectric film devices (ATTFDs) with excellent transverse power generation and cooling performances through accurately controlling the tilted arrangement of nanometer-scale multilayer films. The huge transverse output voltage of 300 μV K−1 and cooling temperature gradient of 68 K·mm−1 are obtained for the first time in Bi/Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 ATTFDs, which are comparable to those from expensive superlattice-based thermoelectric devices. Our work demonstrates that ATTFDs can be narrow-space applied to high-efficient film refrigerators in next-generation electronics and optoelectronics, high-sensitive thermal response sensors, thermoelectric-driven inorganic LED film devices.