Exceptional thermoelectric properties of flexible organic−inorganic hybrids with monodispersed and periodic nanophase

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06251-9
• Publication Date: 2018-09-13T11:39:24Z
• Authors: Liming Wang; Zimeng Zhang; Yuchen Liu; Biran Wang; Lei Fang; Jingjing Qiu; Kun Zhang; Shiren Wang
• Keywords: Science; Q; Electric Conductivity; Temperature; Thermal Conductivity; 02 engineering and technology; 7. Clean energy; Article; Electricity; Inorganic Chemicals; Nanoparticles; Organic Chemicals; 0210 nano-technology; Mechanical Phenomena

Flexible organic-inorganic hybrids are promising thermoelectric materials to recycle waste heat in versatile formats. However, current organic/inorganic suffer from inferior properties due aggregate nanostructures. Here we demonstrate flexible where size-tunable Bi2Te3 nanoparticles discontinuously monodispersed the continuous conductive polymer phase, completely distinct traditional bi-continuous hybrids. Periodic nanofillers significantly scatter phonons while conducting phase provides favored electronic transport, resulting ultrahigh power factor of ~1350 μW m-1 K-2 and ultralow in-plane thermal conductivity ~0.7 W K-1. Consequently, figure-of-merit (ZT) 0.58 is obtained at room temperature, outperforming all reported organic Thermoelectric as-fabricated show negligible change for bending 100 cycles, indicating superior mechanical flexibility. These findings provide significant scientific foundation shaping functionality via synergistic integration inorganic components.