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6.14 Organic Thermoelectric Composites Materials

Authors :
Bob C. Schroeder
Thibault Degousée
Oliver Fenwick
Zilu Liu
Emiliano Bilotti
Prospero Taroni-Junior
Mark Baxendale
Publication Year :
2018
Publisher :
Elsevier, 2018.

Abstract

The use of thermoelectric technology is attractive in many potential applications, such as energy scavenging from waste heat. The basic principles for harvesting electricity from a temperature gradient were first discovered around 180 years ago, but the contemporary technology utilizing inorganic semiconductors was only developed since the early 1950s. The widespread use of this platform has so far been limited by a combination of relatively low efficiency in energy conversion or by issues related to the utilization of rare, expensive and/or toxic elements that can be difficult to process. Much interest has been focused on the use of organic materials in thermoelectric devices, prompted by the possibility of developing large-area, low-cost devices. Research over the last 20 years has been focused on understanding and improving organic thermoelectric properties, but only recently remarkable progress published for compounds such as poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) have attracted considerable attention. This has opened the door to developing a number of organic–inorganic composites for thermoelectric applications which combine the inherently low thermal conductivity and solution processing of organic materials with the high electrical conductivity of many inorganics.

Details

Database :
OpenAIRE
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........68074e373e71338bcd70a2b44f786d49
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-803581-8.10024-4