High-thermopower polarized electrolytes enabled by methylcellulose for low-grade heat harvesting

Low-grade heat exists ubiquitously in the environment. Thermogalvanic cells (TGCs) are promising for converting the widespread low-grade heat directly into electricity owing to relatively high thermopowers of redox reactions. This work reports polarized electrolytes with ultrahigh thermopowers of −8.18 mV K(−1) for n-type and 9.62 mV K(−1) for p-type. The electrolyte consists of I(−)/I(3)(−) redox couple, methylcellulose, and KCl. Thermoresponsive methylcellulose leads to polarization switching from n-type to p-type above a transition temperature due to the strong hydrophobic interaction between methylcellulose and I(3)(−) ions. The giant thermopowers can be attributed to the simultaneously enhanced entropy change and concentration difference of redox couple enabled by the gelation of methylcellulose and KCl-induced complexation. The p-type TGC with the optimized electrolyte achieves a normalized maximum power density of 0.36 mW m(−2) K(−2), which is far superior to other reported I(−)/I(3)(−)-based TGCs. This work demonstrates cost-effective, high-thermopower polarized electrolytes for low-grade heat harvesting.