Effectively enhanced thermopower in polyaniline/Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 nanoplate composites via carrier energy scattering

Journal of Materials Science volume 53, pages6752–6762(2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Carrier energy-filtering effect at organic–inorganic interface has been proved to be very effective for improving the performance of polymer-based thermoelectric composites. To introduce a large amount of organic–inorganic interfaces, Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 nanoplates (BST NP) are fabricated and embedded into camphorsulfonic acid-doped polyaniline (CSA:PANI) through cryogenic grinding followed by hot pressing. It is found that BST NPs are dispersed uniformly in the matrix to form abundant hybrid interfaces in the CSA:PANI/BST NP composites, which shows great enhancement in Seebeck coefficient and power factor. The improvement can be attributed to energy-filtering effect at the CSA:PANI/BST NP interface, which is supported by the distinct transport behavior between CSA:PANI/BST NP and PANI/BST NP composites. Consequently, the maximum ZT values up to 8.637 × 10−4 at 300 K and 1.64 × 10−3 at 400 K are achieved, which is among the best thermoelectric performance of PANI-based bulk composites.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51403037, 51774096), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2232017A-07), Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology (No. 16JC1401800), Program for Innovative Research Team in University of Ministry of Education of China (IRT_16R13), DHU Distinguished Young Professor Program, the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (17ZR1400900) and the Pujiang Talent Program (17PJ1400200).

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Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, China

    Chunxi Guo, Fei Chu, Peng Chen, Juanjuan Zhu, Haifeng Wang, Lianjun Wang & Wan Jiang

  2. Institute of Functional Materials, Donghua University, Shanghai, 201620, China

    Yuchi Fan & Wan Jiang

  3. School of Material Science and Engineering, Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, Jingdezhen, 333000, China

    Wan Jiang

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  1. Chunxi Guo
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  2. Fei Chu
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Correspondence to Lianjun Wang or Yuchi Fan.

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Guo, C., Chu, F., Chen, P. et al. Effectively enhanced thermopower in polyaniline/Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 nanoplate composites via carrier energy scattering. J Mater Sci 53, 6752–6762 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-017-1958-9

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