Scalable manufacturing of a durable, tailorable, and recyclable multifunctional woven thermoelectric textile system

Abstract

Personal thermoregulation and waste-heat harvesting by wearable thermoelectric devices can play important roles in reducing energy consumption toward ultimate carbon neutralization. However, despite the progress achieved so far, it remains challenging to mass manufacture truly wearable thermoelectric devices with good wearability, comfortability, and high performance in solid-state cooling and power generation. Herein, we report a scalable yet facile strategy to manufacture a large-area (1550 cm²), durable, washable, skin-conformable, and thus truly wearable thermoelectric textile (TET) by directly weaving inorganic TE pillars into woven textile. By the systematic thermal and electrical design of TET, it demonstrated a rapid and stable body surface cooling effect of ∼11.8 K and cooling capacity of ∼553.7 W m⁻² under a breezy ambience of ∼34 °C, and could be sustainably powered by solar irradiance toward zero-net energy consumption. Also, it could generate a power density of 6.13 W m⁻² at a temperature difference of 25 K and stably power a cell phone at a self-built temperature difference of ∼15 K in a wearing scenario, outperforming the current state-of-the-art wearable TE devices and others.