Preparation and Characterization of Te/PEDOT:PSS/Cu 7 Te 4 Ternary Composite Films for Flexible Thermoelectric Power Generator.

In this work, Te/PEDOT:PSS/Cu7 Te4 ternary thermoelectric (TE) nanocomposite films were successfully fabricated by physical mixing and then drop casting. An optimized power factor of 65.3 μW/mK2 was acquired from a composite film containing 95 wt% PEDOT:PSS coated Te (PC-Te) nanorods at 300 K, which was 5 times as large as that of PC-Cu7 Te4 nanorod film and about 3 times as large as that of the PC-Te nanorod film. The power factor reached 112.3 μW/mK2 when the temperature was 380 K. STEM and HRSTEM were used to observe the detailed internal microstructure of the composite film, revealing that the Te rods were single crystalline and the Cu7 Te4 rods polycrystalline. The composite film was in fact a 3D network interconnected with the PC-Te and PC-Cu7 Te4 nanorods. The enhancement of the TE properties was ascribed to the synergetic effect of the two kinds of nanorods and the double-carrier filtering effect at the two heterointerfaces of Te/PEDOT:PSS and Cu7 Te4 /PEDOT:PSS. An eight single-leg flexible TE device consisting of the optimized composite film was fabricated, which produced a voltage of 31.2 mV and a maximum output power of 94.7 nW at a temperature gradient of 39 K, respectively.