Organic Thermoelectric Materials

This book summarises the significant progress made in organic thermoelectric materials, focusing on effective routes to minimize thermal conductivity and maximize power factor.

Organic Thermoelectrics Enables readers to understand the development and applications of organic thermoelectric conversion, including fundamentals and experimental breakthroughs Organic Thermoelectrics: From Materials to Devices introduces organic thermoelectric materials to devices in a systematic manner, covering the development of organic thermoelectric materials, followed by a discussion on the fundamental mechanism of thermoelectric conversion, design strategy, and advances in different materials, device fabrication, and characterizations of thermoelectric parameters. In Organic Thermoelectrics: From Materials to Devices, readers can expect to find detailed information on: Fundamentals of thermoelectric (TE) conversion, development of organic thermoelectric (OTE) fields and mechanisms, and basic physical processes in carrier transport and thermal transport for TE conversion Recent development and key strategies to develop p-type, n-type, and composite/hybrid OTE materials Basic mechanisms, fundamental requirements, and recent advances of doping for OTE applications, plus geometries and construction methods of OTE devices Theoretical and experimental advances in single molecular TE devices, together with the recent development in related detection methods Powered by worldwide innovative research results in the past ten years and strongly supported by many collaborators, Organic Thermoelectrics is a comprehensive reference on the subject and is invaluable for scientists and students in chemistry, materials, and engineering.

Authoritative account of recent developments in thermoelectric materials and devices for power energy harvesting applications, ideal for researchers and industrialists in materials science.

Thermoelectric Materials and Devices summarizes the latest research achievements over the past 20 years of thermoelectric material and devices, most notably including new theory and strategies of thermoelectric materials design and the new technology of device integration. The book's author has provided a bridge between the knowledge of basic physical/chemical principles and the fabrication technology of thermoelectric materials and devices, providing readers with research and development strategies for high performance thermoelectric materials and devices. It will be a vital resource for graduate students, researchers and technologists working in the field of energy conversion and the development of thermoelectric devices. Discusses the new theory and methods of thermoelectric materials design Combines scientific principles, along with synthesis and fabrication technologies in thermoelectric materials Presents the design optimization and interface technology for thermoelectric devices Introduces thermoelectric polymers and organic-inorganic thermoelectric composites

Advanced Thermoelectric Materials for Energy Harvesting Applications is a research-intensive textbook covering the fundamentals of thermoelectricity and the process of converting heat energy into electrical energy. It covers the design, implementation, and performance of existing and advanced thermoelectric materials. Chapters examine such topics as organic/inorganic thermoelectric materials, performance and behaviors of thermoelectric devices, and energy harvesting applications of thermoelectric devices.

While there is information available in handbooks on polythiophene chemistry and physics, until now, few if any books have focused exclusively on the most forwardly developed electrically conductive polymer, Poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-otherwise known as PEDOT. This resource provides full chemical, physical, and technical information about this important conducting polymer, discussing basic knowledge and exploring its technical applications. Presented information is based on information generated at universities and through academic research, as well as by industrial scientists, providing a complete picture of the experimental and the practical aspects of this important polymer.

Your guide to advanced thermoelectric materials Written by a distinguished group of contributors, this book provides comprehensive coverage of the most up-to-date information on all aspects of advanced thermoelectric materials — ranging from system biology, diagnostics, imaging, image-guided therapy, therapeutics, biosensors, and translational medicine and personalized medicine, as well as the much broader task of covering most topics of biomedical research.

Environmental and economic concerns have significantly spurred the search for novel, high-performance thermoelectric materials for energy conversion in small-scale power generation and refrigeration devices. This quest has been mainly fueled by the introduction of new designs and the synthesis of new materials. In fact, good thermoelectric material

Thermoelectric materials can turn temperature differences directly into electricity. To use this to harvest e.g. waste heat with an efficiency that approaches the Carnot efficiency requires a figure of merit ZT larger than 1. Compared with their inorganic counterparts, organic thermoelectrics (OTE) have numerous advantages, such as low cost, large-area compatibility, flexibility, material abundance and an inherently low thermal conductivity. Therefore, organic thermoelectrics are considered by many to be a promising candidate material system to be used in lower cost and higher efficiency thermoelectric energy conversion, despite record ZT values for OTE currently lying around 0.25. A complete organic thermoelectric generator (TEG) normally needs both p-type and n-type materials to form its electric circuit. Molecular doping is an effective way to achieve p- and ntype materials using different dopants, and it is necessary to fundamentally understand the doping mechanism. We developed a simple yet quantitative analytical model and compare it with numerical kinetic Monte Carlo simulations to reveal the nature of the doping effect. The results show the formation of a deep tail in the Gaussian density of states (DOS) resulting from the Coulomb potentials of ionized dopants. It is this deep trap tail that negatively influences the charge carrier mobility with increasing doping concentration. The trends in mobilities and conductivities observed from experiments are in good agreement with the modeling results, for a large range of materials and doping concentrations. Having a high power factor PF is necessary for efficient TEG. We demonstrate that the doping method can heavily impact the thermoelectric properties of OTE. In comparison to conventional bulk doping, sequential doping can achieve higher conductivity by preserving the morphology, such that the power factor can improve over 100 times. To achieve TEG with high output power, not only a high PF is needed, but also having a significant active layer thickness is very important. We demonstrate a simple way to fabricate multi-layer devices by sequential doping without significantly sacrificing PF. In addition to the application discussed above, harvesting large amounts of heat at maximum efficiency, organic thermoelectrics may also find use in low-power applications like autonomous sensors where voltage is more important than power. A large output voltage requires a high Seebeck coefficient. We demonstrate that density of states (DOS) engineering is an effective tool to increase the Seebeck coefficient by tailoring the positions of the Fermi energy and the transport energy in n- and p-type doped blends of conjugated polymers and small molecules. In general, morphology heavily impacts the performance of organic electronic devices based on mixtures of two (or more) materials, and organic thermoelectrics are no exception. We experimentally find that the charge and energy transport is distinctly different in well-mixed and phase separated morphologies, which we interpreted in terms of a variable range hopping model. The experimentally observed trends in conductivity and Seebeck coefficient are reproduced by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations in which the morphology is accounted for.

This book presents and facilitates new research and development results with hot topics in the thermoelectric generators (TEGs) field. Topics include: novel thin film; multilayer, composite and nanostructured thermoelectric materials; simulation of phenomena related to thermoelectricity; thermoelectric thin film and multilayer materials manufacturing technologies; measurement techniques for characterization; thermoelectric generators; and the simulation, modeling, design, thermal, and mechanical degradation problems. This book helps researchers tackle the challenges that still remain in creating cheap and effective TEGs and presents the latest trends and technologies in development and production of advanced thermoelectric generation devices.