State of the art and new possibilities to increase thethermoelectric figure of merit of organic materials

Abstract

In this paper, a short review of promising thermoelectric organic materials is provided. It is shown that organic compounds, under appropriate synthesis and after accurate tuning of electronic properties by manipulating the internal molecular structure, may become serious substitutes of classical inorganic thermoelectric materials. A big step forward constitutes the implementation of new trends of nanotechnology in designing the thermoelectric structures. In this order, we provide the most important results, achieved in several low-dimensional thermoelectric structures, such as quantum-dot superlattices or molecular nanowires of conducting polymers. More specifically, the latter structures may become very promising thermoelectric materials, if we refer to the predicted values of ZT ~ 15. Whereas these predictions were made in the frame of simple one-dimensional physical model, in a more realistic physical model the values of ZT ~ 1.1 for an n- type and ZT ~ 4 for a p-type compound are predicted.