Abstract
A stretchable organic thermoelectric multilayer is achieved by alternately depositing bilayers (BL) of 0.1 wt% polyethylene oxide (PEO) and 0.03 wt% double walled carbon nanotubes (DWNT), dispersed with 0.1 wt% polyacrylic acid (PAA), by the layer-by-layer assembly technique. A 25 BL thin film (~500 nm thick), composed of a PEO/DWNT-PAA sequence, displays electrical conductivity of 19.6 S/cm and a Seebeck coefficient of 60 µV/K, which results in a power factor of 7.1 µW/m·K2. The resultant nanocomposite exhibits a crack-free surface up to 30% strain and retains its thermoelectric performance, decreasing only 10% relative to the unstretched one. Even after 1000 cycles of bending and twisting, the thermoelectric behavior of this nanocomposite is stable. The synergistic combination of the elastomeric mechanical properties (originated from PEO/PAA systems) and thermoelectric behaviors (resulting from a three-dimensional conjugated network of DWNT) opens up the possibility of achieving various applications such as wearable electronics and sensors that require high mechanical compliance.
Highlights
The demand for flexible, stretchable, and wearable materials has been rapidly ever increasing since new technology fields require next-generation electronic devices to be capable of bending and stretching under mechanical deformation
In an effort to create stretchable thermoelectric films, we report a simple and environmentally friendly preparation of polyethylene oxide (PEO)/double walled carbon nanotube (DWNT)-polyacrylic acid (PAA) nanocomposites where PEO and double walled carbon nanotubes (DWNT), dispersed by PAA in water, are alternately deposited
Each solution was deposited at a pH of 2.8 in which some protonated carboxylic acid groups in the partially charged PAA chains were available for hydrogen bonding with the ether oxygen in PEO [51,52]
Summary
The demand for flexible, stretchable, and wearable materials has been rapidly ever increasing since new technology fields require next-generation electronic devices to be capable of bending and stretching under mechanical deformation. The rapidly developing field of energy harvesting has been gaining immense attention in wearable technologies that are highly desired for smart clothing, flexible sensors’ encapsulation, and electronic textiles [1,2,3,4]. Stretchable and light weight thermoelectric (TE) materials have become important because of their ability to harvest energy from a temperature gradient without moving parts and the need for maintenance [5,6]. The efficiency of a TE material is defined by the dimensionless figure of merit, ZT = S2σT/к.
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