Single-walled carbon nanotubes/polyaniline-coated polyester thermoelectric textile with good interface stability prepared by ultrasonic induction

Abstract

Wearable electronic devices such as medical sensors, hearing aids and wristwatches can run on power of μW levels. Thermoelectric (TE) generators have the potential to provide power to wearable electronic devices, because they can effectively convert body heat into electrical energy. This study presents a flexible TE generator by applying single-walled carbon nanotube/polyaniline (SWNT/PANI) composites to polyesters, and it was found that ultrasonic induction can enhance the interfacial stability between SWNT/PANI composites and polyesters. The flexible TE generator can generate a TE voltage of 3.82 mV at a temperature difference of 115 K. Moreover, the TE generator can supply a maximum output power of 48.0 nW to the load at a temperature difference of 75 K. In addition to good flexibility and ventilation, the SWNT/PANI textile TE generator displays no change in performance on repeated bending for 150 cycles with a radius of 5 mm, which is important for wearable electronic devices.