Conducting Polymers and Their Hybrids as Organic Thermoelectric Materials

Conducting polymers have received much attention recently as organic thermoelectric materials, because of such advantages as plentiful resources, easy synthesis, easy processing, low cost, low thermal conductivity, and easy fabrication of flexible, light, and printable devices with large area. Many reports on organic thermoelectric materials have recently been published. We have studied conducting polymers as organic thermoelectric materials since 1999. During these investigations, we found that the thermal conductivity of conducting polymers did not increase even though electrical conductivity increased; this was a major advantage of conducting polymers as organic thermoelectric materials. We also observed that molecular alignment was one of the most important factors for improvement of the thermoelectric performance of conducting polymers. Stretching of conducting polymers or their precursors was one of the most common techniques used to achieve good molecular alignment. Recently, alignment of the clusters of conducting polymers by treatment with solvents has been proposed as a means of achieving high electrical conductivity. Hybridization of conducting polymers with inorganic nanoparticles has also been found to improve thermoelectric performance. Here we present a brief history and discuss recent progress of research on conducting polymers as organic thermoelectric materials, and describe the techniques used to improve thermoelectric performance by treatment of conducting polymers with solvents and hybridization of conducting polymers with Bi₂Te₃ and gold nanoparticles.