Magnetic ordering boost excellent thermoelectric performance of flexible films

The poor electrical transport performance of flexible thermoelectric (TE) films is a major bottleneck for the development of in-plane heat dissipation technology based on Peltier effect. Herein, ordered Fe nanoparticles (Fe-NPs) and in-situ Fe3O4 nanoparticles (Fe3O4-NPs) as magnetic functional elements (MFEs) were embedded into Bi0·5Sb1·5Te3 (BST)/epoxy flexible films in order to enhance the TE performance. The remarkable increases in electrical conductivity of BST/MFEs/BST/epoxy flexible films have been confirmed to originate from the carrier mobility increases. The retention of large Seebeck coefficient is attributed to the negative magnetoresistance (MR−) induced by spin-dependent scattering and weak localization effect from MFEs. As a result, the maximum power factor of BST/MFEs/BST/epoxy flexible films increased by 45%, and the maximum cooling temperature difference enhanced by 1.6 times. This work reveals that the ordered MFEs can significantly boost the electro-thermal conversion performance of flexible TE films and the magnetoresistance theory can reveal the scattering mechanism of charge carriers in thermo-electromagnetic flexible films.