Abstract
The past few decades have witnessed considerable progress of conducting polymer-based organic thermoelectric materials due to their significant advantages over the traditional inorganic materials. The nanostructure engineering and performance investigation of these conducting polymers for thermoelectric applications have received considerable interest but have not been well documented. This review gives an outline of the synthesis of various one-dimensional (1D) structured conducting polymers as well as the strategies for hybridization with other nanomaterials or polymers. The thermoelectric performance enhancement of these materials in association with the unique morphologies and structures are discussed. Finally, perspectives and suggestions for the future research based on these interesting nanostructuring methodologies for improvement of thermoelectric materials are also presented.
Highlights
Development of eco-friendly and sustainable approaches for energy generation is a major global challenge faced by the world today
The energy conversion efficiency of a thermoelectric material can be evaluated by the temperature difference and a unitless figure of merit (ZT), which is defined as S2 σT/κ, where S (V K −1 ) is Seebeck coefficient, σ (S m −1 ) is electrical conductivity, κ (W m −1 K −1 ) is thermal conductivity and T (K) is absolute temperature
We introduce the reported strategies to construct 1D nanocomposite thermoelectric materials based on these conducting polymers with further performance improvement
Summary
Development of eco-friendly and sustainable approaches for energy generation is a major global challenge faced by the world today. The traditional high performing thermoelectric materials are mainly inorganic semiconductors or semimetals which possess moderate electrical conductivity and high Seebeck coefficient [6,7]. Most of these materials are facing significant challenges in large- scale manufacturing and practical utilization due to their heavy weight, high cost, scarcity, toxicity, poor processability, brittleness and non-flexibility, for applications in wearable sensors and electronic devices. The enhanced properties associated with the unique morphologies, structures, dopants and doping levels of these materials are discussed Following this discussion, we introduce the reported strategies to construct 1D nanocomposite thermoelectric materials based on these conducting polymers with further performance improvement. We will end off with an outlook on the challenges and future exploration directions for this new class of organic-based thermoelectric materials
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