Pseudoin situconstruction of high-performance thermoelectric composites with a dioxothiopyrone-based D-A polymer coating on SWCNTs

Abstract

Organic polymer/inorganic particle composites with thermoelectric (TE) properties have witnessed rapid progress in recent years. Nevertheless, both development of novel polymers and optimization of compositing methods remain highly desirable. In this study, we first demonstrated a simulatedin situcoagulation strategy for construction of high-performance thermoelectric materials by utilizing single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and a new D-A polymerTPO-TTP12that was synthesizedviaincorporating dioxothiopyrone subunit into a polymeric chain. It was proven that the preparation methods have a significant influence on thermoelectric properties of theTPO-TTP12/SWCNT composites. Thein situprepared composite films tend to achieve much better thermoelectric performances than those prepared by simply mixing the corresponding polymer with SWCNTs. As a result, thein situcompositing obtains the highest Seebeck coefficient of 66.10 ± 0.05 μV K−1at theTPO-TTP12-to-SWCNT mass ratio of 1/2, and the best electrical conductivity of up to 500.5 ± 53.3 S cm−1at the polymer/SWCNT mass ratio of 1/20, respectively; moreover, the power factor for thein situprepared composites reaches a maximum value of 141.94 ± 1.47 μW m−1K−2, far higher than that of 104.68 ± 0.86 μW m−1K−2for the by-mixing produced composites. This indicates that the dioxothiopyrone moiety is a promising building block for constructing thermoelectric polymers, and the simulatedin situcompositing strategy is a promising way to improve TE properties of composite materials.