Chapter 3 - Wearable power generation via thermoelectric textile

Abstract

Wearable thermoelectric (TE) devices show promises in low-grade body heat harvesting, solid-state cooling and stimuli sensing because they can noiselessly and continuously convert heat into electricity and vice versa without moving parts. Especially, TE textiles have the excellent wearability, such as three-dimensional conformability (high flexibility, stretchability, twistability) to the dynamic curved surface on human body, thermal comfortability (i.e. air and moisture permeability and thermoregulation) and durability (mechanical stability and washability), which are indispensable for truly wearable devices toward human body. For TE textiles, the mostly popular TE legs are fiber/yarn-shaped TE legs which can be woven into TE textiles using conventional textile technique at a large scale. According to the integration direction of TE legs, TE textiles can be divided into 2D and 3D TE textiles, in which the TE legs arranged in in-pane and out-of-plane direction, respectively. Besides electricity generation by heat harvesting, TE textiles can also be used as solid-state cooling through inputting direct current according to Peltier effect, which can realize the human body thermoregulation thus reducing the electric energy consumption. Moreover, based on Seebeck effect, TE textiles can also be use to tactile sensors to detect temperature, pressure and strain, etc. Hence, TE textiles have great potential in wearable smart garments toward power generation, thermoregulation and healthcare monitoring.