Thermoelectric characteristics of Si nanowires transferred onto plastics in air

We propose a simple route to examine the thermoelectric characteristics of Si nanowires (NWs) with infrared (IR) images in air. A device platform is designed to investigate the reliability of the thermoelectric characteristics. The Seebeck coefficients of the Si NWs obtained from all the electrode-couples in the platform are nearly identical at about 140 μV/K, revealing the validity of the simple route. The directly measured Seebeck voltages are carefully compared with the sum of the individual Seebeck voltages, and the comparison is discussed in detail.

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• We propose a simple route to examine the thermoelectric characteristics in air.
• The temperature distribution of the device is more clearly expressed.
• The validity of our method is confirmed via comparison between Seebeck voltages.