Controlled carrier dynamics and energy
band engineering in polymer
systems can provide a wider scope for studying the thermoelectric
(TE) performance of such systems. With such an objective, polypyrrole
(PPy) powders were prepared, incorporating a small amount of tellurium
(Te) during the polymerization of pyrrole. The polymerization process
was conducted through an oxidative chemical polymerization technique
using ammonium peroxydisulfate (APS) as an oxidizing agent. The crystal
structure, morphological, optical, and electrical transport properties
were studied to explore the possibility of the better performance
of PPy as a thermoelectric material when incorporated with Te. Since
achieving a high thermo emf at a considerably low temperature difference
is of great significance, and the thermoelectric performances of the
prepared samples were studied in a 100 °C temperature difference
range in this work. A TE power factor of as much as 23.89 μW/mK2 has been recorded for Te-incorporated PPy, which is about
859 times larger than that of pure PPy. This has been achieved by
influencing the carrier dynamics in the system mainly in two ways:
first, by inducing a carrier-filtering effect acquired by lowering
the interfacial energy barrier between the polymer and Te and, second,
by improving the carrier transport over the polymer chains with enhanced
carrier hopping. As a result, a noticeably improved electrical conductivity
of 0.472 S/cm and an exceptionally high Seebeck coefficient of 0.74
mV/°C have been recorded.
To modulate carrier transport and hence thermoelectric properties a facile approach has been undertaken by incorporation of tin dioxide (SnO2) in polyaniline (PANI) and subsequent treatment with camphor sulfonic acid...
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