ICT2014 Abstracts

The present work is focused on the improvement of thermoelectric properties of conducting polymer poly (3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/poly styrenesulfonate (PEDOT: PSS) by post treatment using nitric acid. In this work pristine films of PEDOT: PSS were prepared on glass substrates following drop casting technique and then post treatment was done on the films with nitric acid. Increase in the nitric acid concentration showed increment in electrical conductivity. A maximum electrical conductivity of 197.51 S/cm was achieved which is around 115 times in magnitude compared to the conductivity of pure PEDOT/PSS film (1.71S/cm). Furthermore, a slight increase in Seebeck coefficient was observed for the nitric acid treated films and the approximated ZT value is around 0.068.  Nitric acid was also mixed with pure PEDOT: PSS before casting the films but it yielded poor improvement in electrical conductivity. Nitric acid was mixed with PEDOT: PSS at 1:16 weight ratio and films casted with this mixture gave a conductivity of around 2.5 S/cm. The reasons behind the improvement of electrical conductivity after post-treatment may be due to the depletion of the non-conducting PSS layers after the acid treatment and aggregation of the conducting PEDOT chains. In total, it is an easy method to achieve comparatively good thermoelectric properties which can find uses in flexible thermoelectric applications.