화학공학소재연구정보센터
Journal of Materials Science, Vol.53, No.9, 6752-6762, 2018
Effectively enhanced thermopower in polyaniline/Bi0.5Sb1.5Te3 nanoplate composites via carrier energy scattering
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 x 10(-4) at 300 K and 1.64 x 10(-3) at 400 K are achieved, which is among the best thermoelectric performance of PANI-based bulk composites.