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A1: Low temperature materials
Recent Advances on Polymer Based Thermoelectric Materials
Thermoelectric (TE) materials have attracted much attention due to their potential applications in a variety of practical waste heat recovery system. However, low conversion efficiencies and the high cost of crystalline thermoelectric materials have restricted their implementation. To combat these issues, conducting polymers are considered as potential materials for TE applications due to its attractive features such as low thermal conductivity, solution processability, low cost of fabrication, flexibility and light weight. However, they are associated with a major disadvantage of poor efficiency, that is, a relatively low figure of merit (ZT). The poor efficiency is mainly due to their poor ionic conductivity. Many efforts have been done to improve the ionic conductivity but its success met to sacrifice their Seebeck coefficient or significant increase in thermal conductivity. To make the polymeric TE materials practical and commercial candidates, many research efforts have been done.
In this research, we discuss the basic principles for improving thermoelectric performance along with the basic methodology. And then we highlight the recent progress made in the area of TE applications of conducting polymers. Further, we discuss the effect of different structure, concentrations and molecular weight of conducting polymers on thermoelectric properties and provide several example of conducting materials and their TE application. In addition, a discussion on the fabrication of thermoelectric devices, especially suited to polymers, will also be given. Finally, we provide the challenge and the future of thermoelectric polymers.