All-Automated Fabrication of Free-Standing and Scalable Photo Thermoelectric Devices with High Performance.

Flexible photo-thermoelectric (PTE) devices have great application prospects in the fields of solar energy conversion and ultra-broadband light detection, etc. A suitable manufacturing process to avoid the substrate effects as well as to create a narrow transition area between p-n modules for high-performance free-standing flexible PTE devices is highly desired. Herein, we reported an automated laser fabrication (ALF) method to construct the PTE devices with low-cost and air/heat stable rylene diimide doped n-type single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) films. Before the preparation of the PTE devices, a wet-compressing approach was developed to improve the thermoelectric power factors and ZT of the SWCNT hybrid films. Then the achieved high-performance films were cut and patterned automatically to make PTE devices with various complex structures by the proposed ALF method.The free-standing PTE device with a narrow transition area of ∼2-3 µm between the p- and n- modules exhibited a high output power of >1.7 µW and a high-power density of 0.32 µW/cm 2 under the light of 200 mW/cm 2 which is among the highest level for free-standing film-based PTE devices. The results pave the way to high-performance, scalable, and flexible PTE devices with automatic production process for green power generation and ultra-broadband light detection. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.