All-Automated Fabrication of Freestanding and Scalable Photo-Thermoelectric Devices with High Performance

Flexible photo-thermoelectric (PTE) devices have great application prospects in the fields of solar energy conversion, ultrabroadband 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 freestanding flexible PTE devices is highly desired. Herein, an automated laser fabrication (ALF) method is reported to construct the PTE devices with rylene-diimide-doped n-type single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) films. The wet-compressing approach is developed to improve the thermoelectric power factors and figure of merit (ZT) of the SWCNT hybrid films. Then, the films are cut and patterned automatically to make PTE devices with various structures by the proposed ALF method. The freestanding PTE device with a narrow transition area of ≈2–3 µm between the p and n modules exhibits 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 freestanding-film-based PTE devices. The results pave the way for the automatic production process of PTE devices for green power generation and ultrabroadband light detection.