Hybrid Nanowire/Polymer Composite for Thermoelectric Energy Harvest

Successfully decreasing the thermal conductivity while maintaining or increasing the power factor is the key to improve the efficiency for thermoelectric energy harvesting. Up to date, most research efforts in the development of thermoelectric materials have been devoted to use the rigid inorganic materials and little progress has been achieved to use the hybrid composite. In this presentation, we will discuss our research on the hybrid nanocomposite between inorganic thermoelectric nanowires and conductive polymers and our results indicated that significantly lowered thermal conductivity using the organic polymer matrix and reasonably good electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient could be achieved depending on the mixing ratio between nanowires and conductive polymer, which demonstrates a great potential to form hybrid thermoelectric devices with high flexibility as portable energy source.