(165d) Waste Heat Transition to Electricity with Polymer/CNT Composites

Commercial thermoelectric modules are mostly made of inorganic semiconductors because of their intrinsic high figure of merit. However, their rigidness causes difficulty in customizing shapes and maintaining good contact with heat sources of irregular surfaces. Polymer fits well in the niche market of flexible thermoelectric generators, or even wearable generators that could power the medical sensors or the booming smart wearable devices with body temperature. In our study, inexpensive polyaniline was in situ polymerized onto the surface of carbon nanotube, where polymer backbones locally aligned on the interface. The optimized interface quality benefited the figure of merit via energy filtering effect and phonon scattering. Besides pi stacking that anchored the polyaniline backbone, hydrogen bonds were also introduced to enhance the interaction between two phases. The research built a connection between microstructure design of molecular-scale and macroscale performance of organic thermoelectric generators, and shed light on the application of polymer/CNT composite to waste heat recovery.