Vacancy-Rich Silicon as a Flexible Thermoelectric Material

全世界有超过15太瓦的电力以废热的形式持续损失。热电发电机（TEG）提供了一种减少这种浪费的方法，通过收集热量并使用它来产生电力。虽然TEG设备的转换效率通常<10%，但大量的废热提供了免费的燃料来源，使得TEG对许多不同的应用具有吸引力。该提案的目标是薄膜TEG（有效厚度，1-20微米），随着柔性/可穿戴电子产品的出现以及传感器的增加，预计薄膜TEG将成为未来的核心市场部门，所有这些都需要低功耗。如果TEG可以以低成本生产并具有更高的功能性（例如柔性），那么它们作为未来电子设备的电源的潜力将是巨大的，可以提高我们的生活质量。作为发电机的替代品，同样的薄膜技术也可以反过来用于小规模的加热/冷却应用，薄膜模块已经用于高性能电子产品（空间，军事和航空航天应用）的芯片冷却。硅基技术因其许多实用优势而支撑着全球电子行业。如果不是因为硅的热电转换性能差，这些相同的好处将扩展到TEG。该项目将在“富空位硅”领域开展开创性的材料工作-基本上是在原子水平上去除了许多原子的硅-建立在我们开展的初步工作基础上，该工作表明富空位硅与其他最先进的热电材料具有竞争力。基于空位丰富的硅的柔性薄膜TEG的实现将代表适用于众多应用的变革性步骤，包括发电和服装内的加热/冷却，这是我们与行业合作伙伴合作的具体目标。

Over 15 TW of power is continually lost worldwide in the form of waste heat. Thermoelectric generators (TEGs) offer one method of reducing this waste, by harvesting the heat and using it to create electrical power. While the conversion efficiency of TEG devices is often <10%, the sheer abundance of waste heat, offering a free fuel source, makes TEGs appealing for many diverse applications. This proposal is aimed at thin-film TEGs (active thickness, 1-20 micrometres), forecast to be a core market sector in the future, with the advent of flexible/wearable electronics, and with the increased uptake of sensors, all of which require low-power. If TEGs can be produced at low-cost and with increased functionality (e.g. flexible), their potential is significant to act as a power source for future electronic devices that improve our quality of life. As an alternative to generators, the same thin-film technology can also be used in reverse for small-scale heating/cooling applications, with thin-film modules already used for chip-cooling in high-performance electronics (space, military and aerospace applications). Silicon-based technologies underpin the global electronics industry due to their many practical advantages. These same benefits would extend to TEGs were it not for the poor thermoelectric conversion performance of silicon. This project will undertake pioneering materials work in the area of "vacancy-rich silicon" - essentially silicon with many atoms removed at the atomic level - building on initial work carried-out by us, which has shown vacancy-rich silicon to be competitive with other state-of-the-art thermoelectric materials. The realisation of flexible thin-film TEGs based on vacancy-rich silicon will represent a transformative step applicable to numerous applications, including power generation and heating/cooling within clothing, as targeted specifically by us in co-operation with our industry partners.