Conductive polymers as a new type of thermoelectric material

Thermoelectric properties were investigated for the films of electrically conductive doped polyanilines. The thermoelectric performance, evaluated by thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT = T (S2 σ) / κ), of various protonic acid-doped polyaniline bulk films was found to depend on the electrical conductivity σ of the film. Thus, the higher the electrical conductivity, the higher the figure-of-merit is, because the thermal conductivity κ of polyaniline films does not depend on the electrical conductivity. Among the conductive bulk films of polyaniline, the highest figure-of-merit (ZT = 1 × 10−4) was observed for (±)-10-camphorsulfonic acid (CSA)-doped polyaniline in an emeraldine form (σ - 188 S cm−1) at room temperature. The multilayered film, composed of electrically insulating emeraldine base layers and electrically conducting CSA-doped emeraldine salt layers, exhibited 6 times higher ZT at 300 K than that of a bulk film of CAS-doped polyaniline, showing the highest ZT value of 1.1 × 10−2 at 423 K. Stretching of the CAS-doped polyaniline film also increased the figure-of-merit of doped polyaniline films along the direction of the stretching.