Hierarchically designed sticky thermoelectric materials to fabricate thinner Peltier sheets and device architectures

The market of Peltier devices has been growing in the healthcare, automotive, and sensor industries, yet the cooling performance has been constrained because of their rigidity, small area size, and low cooling capacity. Physically speaking, thinner Peltier sheets could solve these long-known issues because of sheet’s enhanced flexibility enabling to attach on various surfaces, larger cooling area for the same amount of thermoelectric (TE) materials used, and better device cooling capacity. To build the thinner Peltier sheet, we enclosed the deformable hierarchically designed sticky TE materials within the punched holes of 0.5-mm thickness middle layer using the upper and bottom electrode layers. We obtained the flexibility as bending φ 20 mm, 5-times less weight per area, and Peltier effect as the temperature differences over 4 °C between the upper and bottom. This paper suggests the hierarchically designed sticky TE materials pave a way to develop and mass-produce thinner Peltier sheets. Graphical abstract