Abstract
Ionic thermoelectric polymers are a new class of materials with great potential for use in low-grade waste heat harvesting and the field has seen much progress during the recent years. In this work, we briefly review the working mechanism of such materials, the main advances in the field and the main criteria for performance comparison. We examine two types of polymer-based ionic thermoelectric materials: ionic conductive polymer and ionogels. Moreover, as a comparison, we also examine the more conventional ionic liquid electrolytes. Their performance, possible directions of improvements and potential applications have been evaluated.
Highlights
According to research by Forman et al [1] in 2015, 72% of the global primary energy consumption was lost as waste heat, totalling about 68.254 TWh
We review the recent progress in this field over the past 5 years and the thermoelectric properties of the materials are listed in Table 1; the numbers in the italic format are not directly given in the original article, but calculated based on the other values provided in the same article and may serve for comparison purpose not necessarily reflecting the real performances of the material
The latest progress in the field of ionic thermoelectric materials has been examined in this review
Summary
According to research by Forman et al [1] in 2015, 72% of the global primary energy consumption was lost as waste heat, totalling about 68.254 TWh. It should be noted that the charge carriers, in this case are electrons, but the thermophoresis of ions due to the Soret effect plays an indispensable role in the enhanced thermoelectric performance Devices made from this method vastly outperforms mixtures of PEDOT:PSS and polyelectrolytes in terms of power factor, electrical conductivity and the ability to operate continuously (see Table 1) and present a new direction for the optimisation of PEDOT:PSS-based materials. A significant increase in the power density of TEG was achieved by mixing high boiling point molecular solvents with ionic liquid-redox couple electrolytes [44] This is the result of a decrease in viscosity and higher ion diffusion coefficients. The achieved power density is an impressive 4 W/m2
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