Ultrathin MEMS thermoelectric generator with BiTe/(Pt, Au) multilayers and SbTe legs.

Multilayer structure is one of the research focuses of thermoelectric (TE) material in recent years. In this work, n-type 800 nm BiTe/(Pt, Au) multilayers are designed with p-type SbTe legs to fabricate ultrathin microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) TE devices. The power factor of the annealed BiTe/Pt multilayer reaches 46.5 μW cm K at 303 K, which corresponds to more than a 350% enhancement when compared to pristine BiTe. The annealed BiTe/Au multilayers have a lower power factor than pristine BiTe. The power of the device with SbTe and BiTe/Pt multilayers measures 20.9 nW at 463 K and the calculated maximum output power reaches 10.5 nW, which is 39.5% higher than the device based on SbTe and BiTe, and 96.7% higher than the SbTe and BiTe/Au multilayers one. This work can provide an opportunity to improve TE properties by using multilayer structures and novel ultrathin MEMS TE devices in a wide variety of applications.