Thermoelectric systems are very effective in harvesting electricity from waste heat or heat sources with low temperature gradients relative to the environmental temperature - which are inadequate for power generation using conventional systems, but are often present in the environment (like body heat and solar and geothermal energy) or generated from various power generating or consuming systems. Furthermore, it is possible to use them for refrigeration. Their simple leg-type structures, without moving parts, provide enormous advantages over conventional turbines, engines, and compressors. In addition, their high energy density (per unit weight and volume) is ideal for mobile power sources and refrigeration with robustness and silence. This talk includes recent progresses in Yu group for developing new-class of fully organic thermoelectric materials, which can provide light-weight (higher power density), inexpensive, and non-toxic solutions for waste heat recovery or cooling. Polymers are intrinsically poor thermal conductors, which make them ideal for thermoelectrics, but low electrical conductivity and thermopower (or the Seebeck coefficient) have excluded them as feasible candidates in the past. Our recent results demonstrated that electrical properties of organic composites can be brought to degenerate semiconductor or metallic regimes by incorporating carbon nanotubes without significantly changing thermal conductivity. The details of our approach for material synthesis and characterization will be discussed.

Hybrids of conducting polymers and carbon nanotubes for harvesting electrical energy and thermoelectric cooling

249th National Meeting (2015)

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