Realizing a 10 °C Cooling Effect in a Flexible Thermoelectric Cooler Using a Vortex Generator

Abstract

In this study, flexible thermoelectric coolers (FTECs) are used to develop an alternative personalized cooling technology to achieve a large temperature drop of 10 °C and cooling capacity of 256 W m–2. Such an excellent cooling performance is attributed to the innovative design of the quadra-layered Ag2Se/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate structure in FTECs and the induced air vortices by the vortex generator attached to the hot surface of the device. The applied pulse-width modulation technique guarantees human body comfort at inconsistent ambient temperature by modulating the duty ratio of the power source, which also saves 35% of the power consumption. As a result, the as-prepared FTECs only consume 68.5 W so as to maintain a comfortable skin temperature (32 ± 0.5 °C) when the ambient temperature is at 31 °C. This technology provides a reliable and adjustable solution for personalized cooling in environments where comfortable temperatures are exceeded.