Applications of Additive Manufacturing Techniques in the Fabrication of Thermoelectric Materials and Devices

Thermoelectric (TE) materials and devices, which typically work on the physical principle based on charge carrier and phonon transport processes in a solid which are employed to directly transform heat into electricity or vice versa. The improvement of conversion efficiencies of TE materials is mostly dependent on primary factors like geometric structure optimization, Seebeck effect, composition control of TE materials, and development of innovative synthesis techniques. Additive manufacturing (AM) is an advanced level technology to produce complex geometries from the 3D model data. This approach offers a number of advantages, including the ability to fabricate complicated geometric shapes efficiently, mass customization that minimizes raw resources, fixturing, usage of manufacturing equipment and less time consumption. As a result, AM is well adapted to develop nearly any form of TE material or device. The use of AM techniques on TE materials and devices has been in its initial phases, although it is a broad field of research. This chapter emphasizes a quick overview of the research accomplishments and current issues in additively manufactured TE materials and devices. Also, the various AM processes for the processing of TE materials are discussed, which include stereolithography apparatus (SLA), fused deposition modeling (FDM), selective laser sintering (SLS), and solution printing (SP). The difficulties of using AM for TE materials and challenges are also addressed.