Laser-induced forward transfer as a method for manufacturing elements for a thermoelectric energy harvester

Feinäugle, M., Sones, C.L., Koukharenko, E., Gholipour, B., Hewak, D.W. and Eason, R.W. (2012) Laser-induced forward transfer as a method for manufacturing elements for a thermoelectric energy harvester. E-MRS '12 Materials Research Society Spring Meeting, Strasbourg, France. 13 - 17 May 2012.

Abstract

The direct-write method of laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) has been previously used for the prototyping and repair of thin film electrical and optical devices on a micron scale. The technique principally avoids any vacuum technology, any lithographic or annealing process steps and offers the possibility of intact printing of a portion of a substrate (referred to as the donor) onto an acceptor substrate (the receiver). Thus, it may enable the transfer of donor layers that have been previously grown with a pre-defined material phase, pixel structure or specific properties as the LIFT-transferred deposit is only affected by the laser within a thin surface region which is important for manufacturing devices without further post-deposition processing steps.
In order to demonstrate the feasibility of LIFT in the fabrication of a thermoelectric energy harvesting device on a thermally sensitive substrate, we show nanosecond-LIFT of up to 12mm2 large areas of the thermoelectric chalcogenide donors bismuth selenide and bismuth telluride onto polymers. We have also compared the Seebeck coefficients of the original donor layer and the resultant transferred pixel as a measure of the materials' ability to transform a temperature gradient into electrical energy. Furthermore we have studied the morphology of the donor and we report our progress towards LIFT fabrication of a thermoelectric generator that can be used for energy harvesting.

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Contributors

Author: D.W. Hewak

Author: R.W. Eason

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