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Figure 1. Principle of spatially decoupled transverse thermoelectric response. (A) Comparison between conventional transverse TE elements (top) and the proposed decoupled TE architecture (bottom); (B) Schematic of a two-layer thermal diffusion system model. The thermal conductivities and thicknesses of Layer 1 and Layer 2 are denoted as κ₁, κ₂ and d₁, d₂, with their corresponding temperature fields defined as T₁, T₂. A thermally coupled interlayer with equivalent thermal conductivity κ_c and thickness d_c exists between the two layers; (C) Schematic illustration of the 3D thermal coupling mechanism: the lower layer with thermal deflection angle θ drives the upper layer to present continuously adjustable oblique angles that shift from ϕ = 0 to ϕ ≈ θ; (D) The effect of the dimensionless coupling parameter Γ = $$ \frac{\kappa _cL^2}{\kappa _1d_1d_c} $$ on the degree of thermal deflection; (E) Parametric response of the upper-layer deflection angle ϕ as a function of Γ and the lower-layer angle θ. The colored curves represent different lower-layer deflection angles: pink: θ = 15°, blue: θ = 30°, black: θ = 45° and red: θ = 60°; (F) Theoretically derived normalized thermoelectric voltage (blue line) and power factor (red line) as a function of $$ \nabla $$_yT/$$ \nabla $$_xT. TE: Thermoelectric.