Design of a wearable thermoelectric generator for harvesting human body energy

Abstract

This paper presents the design and fabrication of a wearable thermoelectric generator (TEG) with high power density for harvesting the human body heat energy. The proposed TEG was fabricated using a flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) as the substrate. The P-type and N-type thermoelectric blocks were made of Bi2Te3-based thermoelectric material and welded on the FPCB, and they were surrounded by the soft PDMS material. The prototyped TEG consisted of 18 thermocouples, which was connected by FPCB and silver paste over an area of 42 × 30 mm2. The fabricated TEG could generate a voltage of 48 mV for a temperature difference of 12 K. Then, the TEG was mounted onto the human wrist skin to harvest the human body heat energy. Results showed that the measured output power was 130.6 nW at ambient temperature of 25 °C. Thus, the developed TEG has the potential for human body heat energy harvesting and utilized for the development of wearable self-powered mobile devices.