Large-area nanofiber membrane of NIR photothermal Cs0.32WO3 for flexible and all-weather solar thermoelectric generation

Harvesting heat or solar energy to directly generate affordable and sustainable electricity holds great promise toward both fundamental science and practical applications in self-powered wearable electronics. However, solar thermoelectric (STE) devices remain challenging in establishing a stable and significant temperature gradient (ΔT) across thermoelectric materials for cost-effective electricity generation. Herein, a wearable STE generator with all-weather and high-performance electricity generation was elaborately designed and synthesized sandwiched by a thermogalvanic cell and a large-area nanofiber membrane of Cs0.32WO3 (CWO) nanoparticles with strong near-infrared (NIR) absorption. These prepared CWO membranes, which were prepared via an electrostatic spinning technique, present a high photothermal conversion efficiency of 42.7 % with no degradation after running for 10 cycles. Notably, a significant ΔT of 31.5 K across the thermoelectric modular was achieved for STE generation via the thermal concentration of these photothermal membranes under natural sunlight. Owing to the high thermopower of 2.87 mV K−1 for each p-n pair, STE generation demonstrates a maximum output voltage of 200 mV under natural solar irradiance during the time period of noon. This work explores a new strategy to achieve efficient heat management of STE devices for high electricity generation under all-weather conditions, which demonstrates great potential for self-powered wearable electronics.