Rapid Printing of 3D Printed SnSe Thermoelectric Generators Utilising an Inorganic Binder

There has been much interest in tin selenide (SnSe) in the thermoelectric community since the discovery of the record zT in the material in 2014. Manufacturing techniques used to produce SnSe are largely energy intensive (e.g. spark plasma sintering), however recently SnSe has been shown to be produced via a low embodied printing technique resulting in 3D samples with high zT values. Due to the additive manufacturing technique, the manufacturing time required was substantial. In this work, 3D samples were printed using the inorganic binder sodium metasilicate and reusable molds. This facilitated a single step printing process, that substantially reduced manufacturing time. The printed samples were thermal stability through multiple thermal cycles and a peak zT of 0.31 at 823 K was observed with the optimum binder concentration. A proof-of-concept thermoelectric generator (TEG) produced the higher power output of any reported printed Se based TEG to date.