3D Soft Architectures for Stretchable Thermoelectric Wearables with Electrical Self‐Healing and Damage Tolerance

• DOI: 10.1002/adma.202407073
• Publication Date: 2024-08-30T14:50:15Z
• Authors: Youngshang Han; Halil Tetik; Mohammad H. Malak...
• Keywords: Wearable Technology; Self-healing material

Flexible thermoelectric devices (TEDs) exhibit adaptability to curved surfaces, holding significant potential for small-scale power generation and thermal management. However, they often compromise stretchability, energy conversion, or robustness, thus limiting their applications. Here, the implementation of 3D soft architectures, multifunctional composites, self-healing liquid metal conductors, rigid semiconductors is introduced overcome these challenges. These TEDs are extremely stretchable, functioning at strain levels as high 230%. Their unique design, verified through multiphysics simulations, results in a considerably density 115.4 µW cm⁻