Enhancement of thermoelectric power factor via electron energy filtering in Cu doped MoS2 on carbon fabric for wearable thermoelectric generator applications

The design and construction of state-of-the-art wearable thermoelectric materials are important for the development of self-powered wearable thermoelectric generators (WTEGs). Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) has been reported as a noteworthy thermoelectric (TE) material because of its large intrinsic bandgap and high carrier mobility. In this work, Cu-doped two-dimensional layered MoS2 nanosheets were grown on carbon fabric (CF) via a hydrothermal method. The electrical conductivity, Seebeck coef-ficient, and power factor for the Cu-doped MoS2 were found to increase with increasing temperature. The maximum Seebeck coefficient was obtained for a MoS2 sample doped with 4 at% of Cu (CM4) was-10 lV/K at 303 K and-13 lV/K at 373 K. The enhancement in the Seebeck coefficient was attributed to an energy-filtering effect caused by the interfacial barrier between MoS2 and Cu. In addition, a thermo-electric device was designed with four pairs of TE materials, where CM4 (4 at%) was used as a p-type material and Cu wire was used as an n-type material. These p- and n-type materials were connected elec-trically in series and thermally in parallel to generate a voltage of 190.7 lV at a temperature gradient of 8 K. (c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.