Investigation of Seebeck Effect in Metal Oxide Nanowires for Powering Autonomous Microsystems

摘要

Quasi-monodimensional metal oxide nanostructures have been recently considered as promising candidates to develop high-efficiency and high-temperature thermo-electric devices due to their reduced dimensionality and excellent durability at high temperature [1]. The fabrication of a thermoelectric generator (TEG) requires both n- and p-type elements. To this purpose, bundles of ZnO (n-type) and CuO (p-type) nanowires have been grown by thermal evaporation process [2] and thermal oxidation techniques [3], respectively, and a planar thermoelectric generator has been fabricated.