Pseudo construction of high-performance thermoelectric composites with a dioxothiopyrone-based D-A polymer coating on SWCNTs.

Organic polymer/inorganic particle composites with thermoelectric (TE) properties have witnessed rapid progress in recent years. Nevertheless, both development of novel polymers and optimization of compositing methods remain highly desirable. In this study, we first demonstrated a simulated coagulation strategy for construction of high-performance thermoelectric materials by utilizing single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and a new D-A polymer TPO-TTP12 that was synthesized incorporating dioxothiopyrone subunit into a polymeric chain. It was proven that the preparation methods have a significant influence on thermoelectric properties of the TPO-TTP12/SWCNT composites. The prepared composite films tend to achieve much better thermoelectric performances than those prepared by simply mixing the corresponding polymer with SWCNTs. As a result, the compositing obtains the highest Seebeck coefficient of 66.10 ± 0.05 μV K at the TPO-TTP12-to-SWCNT mass ratio of 1/2, and the best electrical conductivity of up to 500.5 ± 53.3 S cm at the polymer/SWCNT mass ratio of 1/20, respectively; moreover, the power factor for the prepared composites reaches a maximum value of 141.94 ± 1.47 μW m K, far higher than that of 104.68 ± 0.86 μW m K for the by-mixing produced composites. This indicates that the dioxothiopyrone moiety is a promising building block for constructing thermoelectric polymers, and the simulated compositing strategy is a promising way to improve TE properties of composite materials.