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Organic thermoelectric materials for energy harvesting and temperature control

Nature Reviews Materials volume 1, Article number: 16050 (2016) Cite this article

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Abstract

Conjugated polymers and related processing techniques have been developed for organic electronic devices ranging from lightweight photovoltaics to flexible displays. These breakthroughs have recently been used to create organic thermoelectric materials, which have potential for wearable heating and cooling devices, and near-room-temperature energy generation. So far, the best thermoelectric materials have been inorganic compounds (such as Bi2Te3) that have relatively low Earth abundance and are fabricated through highly complex vacuum processing routes. Molecular materials and hybrid organic–inorganic materials now demonstrate figures of merit approaching those of these inorganic materials, while also exhibiting unique transport behaviours that are suggestive of optimization pathways and device geometries that were not previously possible. In this Review, we discuss recent breakthroughs for organic materials with high thermoelectric figures of merit and indicate how these materials may be incorporated into new module designs that take advantage of their mechanical and thermoelectric properties.

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Figure 1: Molecular design and energetics of OTE materials.
Figure 2: Effect of structural order of OTE materials on transport properties.
Figure 3: The thermoelectric properties of a wide range of OTE materials follow the same empirical trend.
Figure 4: Ordered regions connected by disordered chains in semiconducting polymeric materials.
Figure 5: OTE materials compatible with high-throughput 2D processing enable customizable and easily optimizable device architectures.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support from the AFOSR-MURI on Controlling Thermal and Electrical Transport in Organic and Hybrid Materials, AFOSR MURI FA9550-12-1-0002, as well as the Molecular Foundry, a LBNL user facility supported by the Office of Science, BES, US DOE, under Contract DE-AC02-05CH11231.

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  1. Boris Russ and Anne Glaudell: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Boris Russ & Jeffrey J. Urban

  2. Materials Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106, California, USA

    Anne Glaudell, Michael L. Chabinyc & Rachel A. Segalman

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, 93106, California, USA

    Rachel A. Segalman

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  1. Boris Russ
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Correspondence to Jeffrey J. Urban, Michael L. Chabinyc or Rachel A. Segalman.

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Russ, B., Glaudell, A., Urban, J. et al. Organic thermoelectric materials for energy harvesting and temperature control. Nat Rev Mater 1, 16050 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/natrevmats.2016.50

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