Abstract
Conductive polymers are of particular interest for thermoelectric applications due to their low thermal conductivity and relatively high electrical conductivity. In this study, commercially available conducting polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) was used in a hybrid metal/polymer/metal thin film design in order to achieve a high Seebeck coefficient with the value of 252 μV/k on a relatively low temperature scale. Polymer film thickness was varied in order to investigate its influence on the Seebeck effect. The high Seebeck coefficient indicates that the metal/polymer/metal design can develop a large entropy difference in internal energy of charge carriers between high and low-temperature metal electrodes to develop electrical potential due to charge transport in conducting polymer film through metal/polymer interface. Therefore, the metal/polymer/metal structure presents a new design to combine inorganic metals and organic polymers in thin-film form to develop Seebeck devices.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 173304 |
| Journal | Applied Physics Letters |
| Volume | 101 |
| Issue number | 17 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 22 2012 |
Funding
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial supports from Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) under the grant number FA9550-11-1-0082 and from NSF under grant number ECCS-0644945. This research was partially conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences based on user project (CNMS2012-106 and CNMS2012-107), which is sponsored at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by the Division of Scientific User Facilities, U.S. Department of Energy. This work is also supported by the High Temperature Materials Laboratory user program at ORNL, which is sponsored by the Energy Efficiency en renewable Energy program at DOE.