Donor-doped ZnO thin films on mica for fully-inorganic flexible thermoelectrics

The development of fully-inorganic thin flexible materials is important for flexible thermoelectric applications in a wide temperature range, such as harvesting power from hot curved surfaces (e.g. hot pipes). Here, we investigate the thermoelectric properties of a series of ZnO:Ga,Al thin films with varying dopant concentration deposited on flexible mica substrate by atmospheric pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. The films are bendable, while sustaining the high power factor, above 1 x 10(-4)Wm(-1)K(-2) for singly doped Zn0.99Ga0.01O film in a wide temperature range, from room temperature to 400 degrees C. IMPACT STATEMENTFor the first time we demonstrate here that ZnO-film-on-mica can be a promising n-type candidate for fully-inorganic flexible thermoelectrics, especially, for applications at elevated temperatures [GRAPHICS]Funding Agencies|European Research Council (ERC) under the European Community [335383]; Swedish Research Council (VR) [2016-03365]; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University [SFO-Mat-LiU 2009 00971]; Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation through the Academy Fellow program; Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) through the Future Research Leaders 5 program; Swedish Research Council (VR) Marie Sklodowska Curie International Career Grant [2015-00679]; AForsk [14-517]