Near room-temperature in situ interfacial polymerization for PEDOT-based thermoelectric textile

Abstract

Fiber-based organic thermoelectric composites have attracted increasing attention on smart wearable devices. Herein, a near room-temperature in situ interfacial polymerization method is proposed to fabricate a thermoelectric textile with core-shell structures. To optimize the parameters of fabrication process, the response surface methodology is applied to obtain the optimal experimental parameters. The thermoelectric textiles fabricated by the optimal parameters (0.30 mol/L Na2S2O8, 0.31 mol/L TsOH, 225 μl/10 ml EDOT, and −13 ℃ reaction temperature) show a high electrical conductivity (2.19 S·cm−1) and Seebeck coefficient (14 μV·K−1). Further, a thermopile composed of thermoelectric textile strips and copper wires is constructed to verify the heat-to-electricity conversion of thermoelectric textile. At a temperature difference of 30 °C, the thermoelectric device can continuously produce voltage and power factor to 0.72 mV and 5.52 × 10−2 nW respectively. Thus, the development of the thermoelectric fabric provides a conception to fabricate flexible thermoelectric devices.