Lee Woongki, Song Myeonghun, Park Soohyung, Nam Sungho, Seo Jooyeok, Kim Hwajeong, Kim Youngkyoo
Organic Nanoelectronics Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Applied Chemical Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Republic of Korea.
Advanced Composites Materials Technical Center, Toray Advanced Materials Korea Inc., Gumi 39389, Gyeongbuk, Republic of Korea.
Sci Rep. 2016 Sep 26;6:33795. doi: 10.1038/srep33795.
Organic thermoelectric devices (OTEDs) are recognized one of the next generation energy conversion platforms because of their huge potentials for securing electricity continuously from even tiny heat sources in our daily life. The advantage of OTEDs can be attributable to the design freedom in device shapes and the low-cost fabrication by employing solution coating processes at low temperatures. As one of the major OTE materials to date, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) has been used, but no study has been yet carried out on its acidity control even though the acidic components in OTEDs can seriously affect the device performance upon operation. Here we demonstrate that the addition of aniline (a weak base) can control the acidity of PEDOT:PSS and enhance the performance of OTEDs. In particular, the vertical OTEDs with aniline-doped PEDOT:PSS films (active area = 1.0 cm) could continuously generate electricity (0.06 nW) even at low temperatures (<38 °C) when they were mounted on a desk lamp (power = 24 W).
有机热电器件（OTEDs）因其在日常生活中从微小热源持续获取电力的巨大潜力而被视为下一代能量转换平台之一。OTEDs的优势可归因于器件形状的设计自由度以及通过低温溶液涂层工艺实现的低成本制造。作为迄今为止主要的有机热电材料之一，聚（3,4 - 亚乙基二氧噻吩）：聚（苯乙烯磺酸盐）（PEDOT:PSS）已被使用，但尽管OTEDs中的酸性成分在器件运行时会严重影响其性能，却尚未有关于控制其酸度的研究。在此，我们证明添加苯胺（一种弱碱）可以控制PEDOT:PSS的酸度并提高OTEDs的性能。特别是，具有苯胺掺杂PEDOT:PSS薄膜（有效面积 = 1.0平方厘米）的垂直OTEDs，当安装在台灯（功率 = 24瓦）上时，即使在低温（<38°C）下也能持续发电（0.06纳瓦）。
