Design and Development of Wearable Thermoelectric Device

Abstract

Wearable technology has attracted a lot of attention due to the growing popularity of patient medical surveillance and various electronic sensors, but the batteries need to change regularly. To circumvent this bottleneck of batteries, researchers are inventing innovative approaches by using the renewable energy sources. Among many energy harvesting techniques, thermoelectric energy harvesting techniques are widely used to provide power for wearable devices. Based on the Seebeck effect, Thermoelectric Devices (TEDs) can turn heat into electricity and the human body may be viewed as a natural heat source. Wearable Thermoelectric Device (WTED) is emerging as a possible method for self-powering devices. newlineThis thesis focuses on the design and development of WTEDs that can harvest heat energy from the human body. The design parameters of the proposed WTEDs are optimized and the resulting TEDs are fabricated and experimentally analyzed. The performance of the proposed WTEDs is then compared to existing WTEDs newline