ICT2014 Abstracts

Energy Harvesting (EH) is an important enabling technology necessary to unleash the next shift in mobile computing, especially for wireless sensor nodes (WSN). Energy can be harvested from thermal sources using Seebeck effect. When a temperature gradient is present between the two sides of the material, a potential is generated. Although, many materials have been investigated in order to increase the generated electrical energy, having a high Seebeck coefficient with cost-effective fabrication process has thus far been elusive. 

This paper reports experimental results for measuring the Seebeck coefficient of Graphene-based thermoelectric generator. Graphene has been a topic of interest during the past decade due to its unique electrical and mechanical properties. The experiment is done using a 2mg/ml Graphene Oxide deposited on a 2 inch diameter Micca substrate.  The sample is then deoxidized using HI acid to generate different numbers of Graphene layers, mainly ranging between 50 to 1000 layers. The results show that a Seebeck coefficient with an average of 90µV/K is generated. In addition, the resistance of the Graphene samples is 210 and 0.66 kΩ at 50 and 1000 layers, respectively.

Although the achieved Seebeck effect value is less than the ones reported in the literature, the current approach in this paper is cost-effective due to less complicated process. As such, if the Graphene samples are stacked together, it could potentially be used to generate enough power in order to run ultra-low power WSN with minimum cost.