High-Performance Flexible Thermoelectric Sensor for Temperature Perception

Abstract

Based on the application background of the Internet of Things and wearable health monitoring, flexible thermoelectric sensor devices have attracted widespread attention from researchers. Achieving energy harvesting alongside temperature sensing is an inevitable trend toward realizing passive Internet nodes. Although the current studies satisfy the requirements of temperature sensing and energy harvesting, they show low integration and poor temperature measurement accuracy and sensitivity. This work develops a flexible thermoelectric sensor based on the Seebeck effect of thermoelectric materials. Under a 30 K temperature difference, the normalized power density reaches 49.62 mW·m^–2·g^–1·K^–2. Through circuit design, the thermoelectric device is segmented into four units, enabling simultaneous detection of temperature variations in each unit with a response time of 2 s for fingertip touches. Furthermore, additional units can be added to the circuit design as needed to meet diverse temperature-sensing environments, broadening the application scope of thermoelectric devices.