Columnar thermoelectric elements of linked spheres for miniature electric generation modules.

Thermoelectric elements that were formed from vertically aligned microspheres were fabricated from 500-µm monosized spherical particles of Fe2VAl alloys with a particle assembly that used pulsed current micro-welding. P-n pairs of the elements consisting of three particles generated relatively large temperature differences ΔT despite being 1.5 mm tall. At ΔT = 19 K, the five pairs generated a voltage of 21 mV and a maximum generation power of 40 µW, which converted to 0.21 V/cm2 voltage per unit area and 0.4 mW/cm2 power density, respectively. Moreover, we demonstrated the feasibility of building a massive array with 100 elements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]