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Thermoelectric generators (TEGs) are environmentally friendly energy harvesting technologies that hold great promise in the field of self-powered electronics and sensing. However, the current development of thermoelectric (TE) devices has largely lagged behind the development of thermoelectric materials, especially in the preparation of thermoelectric components with customizable shapes and excellent properties, which largely limits their practical applications. These issues can be effectively addressed by using 3D printing technology. Here, we print multiple p-type thermoelectric legs (pins) consecutively with this simple technique, and the printed TEGs have excellent thermal potential (288 μV K–1at room temperature) and excellent temperature response properties, which exhibited an output voltage of 127.94 mV at a temperature difference (ΔT) of 40 K. The 3D-printed thermoelectric generator enables the collection of thermal energy. In addition, the device has excellent temperature sensing characteristics, and this temperature signal to electrical signal conversion is very rapid, which enables temperature sensing alarms in a wide temperature domain. Combining these features, an energy harvesting and electrical alarm concept for home-scale applications is proposed, which is expected to provide a diverse research idea for the application of next-generation thermoelectric devices.

Thermal interface materials (TIMs) play a crucial role in addressing the heat dissipation challenges of electronic components, which needing high thermal conductivity and low thermal resistance to effectively improve heat transfer between chip and heat sink. This work focuses on the design of a 3D printable phase change based TIMs, which can be integrated with 3D printing technology to provide shapes suitable for quickly filling the gap between the chip and the heat sink in actual automated production. The optimized sample exhibits a total thermal resistance of 0.0012 m2K/W at operating temperature, with a through-plane thermal conductivity of 0.48 W/mK and an in-plane thermal conductivity of 1.24 W/mK. In practical thermal management, the resulting samples demonstrated a temperature reduction of 22 °C comparison with commercial TIM, highlighting its superior heat dissipation capability.