High Performance Flexible Thin-Film Thermoelectric Generator Heated by Methanol Catalytic Combustion

A flexible thin-film micro combustion-thermoelectric coupled (tf-MTC) device is proposed as a power supply for wireless sensors with small scale. Which is composed of thin-film thermoelectric generator (TEG) and catalytic layer. A simple but effective method is proposed for the integration of catalytic layer and thin-film TEG. With consideration of power generation system miniaturization, methanol is chosen as the fuel of catalytic combustion for its special characteristic of room-temperature self ignition and steady performance during catalytic combustion based on platinum catalyst. The centralized device with high output performance shows potential as a portable power. To make full use of the catalytic combustion energy, the integration method of catalytic layer and the electrode is proposed to form decentralized device, which greatly improves the flexible tf-MTC device output performance. The open voltage increases by nearly 103%, the value reaches 0.65 V at temperature difference 171.2 °C during steady catalytic combustion at flow rate of 1000 mL/min, and the corresponding maximum output power is 13.18 μW with a load resistance of 8 kΩ. And the response of device to methanol, including temperature and open voltage are recorded to identify the stability of self-ignition characteristic with the fuel of methanol.