ICT2014 Abstracts

Thin film solar thermoelectric generator (STEG) shows much promise in effective use of solar energy and power supply for wireless sensors and microscale device. This paper demonstrates the configuration of thin film STEG which can be easily fabricated using simple patterning techniques. Thermal design, including the optimization of thermal flow and temperature distribution, is the key to obtain high performance in thin film STEG. Hence, the temperature distribution, heat flux distribution and voltage of thin film STEG are simulated using finite element method (ANSYS). The properties of substrate and heat conductive layer, and the length of thermoelectric leg are optimized to guide device design. The effects of air convection and concentration ratio are also studied. To achieve thermal directional flow along thermoelectric legs and avoid unnecessary heat waste in substrate, a further optimization on the shape of substrate and conductive layer is conducted. Then the output voltage has a further increase by 21.4%. After the comprehensive optimization design, the output power of proposed thin film STEG is largely enhanced with level of milliwatt.