Culebras Mario, Choi Kyungwho, Cho Chungyeon
Stokes Laboratories, Bernal Institute, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
Transportation Innovative Research Center, Korea Railroad Research Institute, Uiwang-si 16105, Korea.
Micromachines (Basel). 2018 Nov 30;9(12):638. doi: 10.3390/mi9120638.
Environmental energy issues caused by the burning of fossil fuel such as coal, and petroleum, and the limited resources along with the increasing world population pose a world-wide challenge. Alternative energy sources including solar energy, wind energy, and biomass energy, have been suggested as practical and affordable solutions to future energy needs. Among energy conversion technologies, thermoelectric (TE) materials are considered one of the most potential candidates to play a crucial role in addressing today's global energy issues. TE materials can convert waste heat such as the sun, automotive exhaust, and industrial processes to a useful electrical voltage with no moving parts, no hazardous working chemical-fluids, low maintenance costs, and high reliability. These advantages of TE conversion provide solutions to solve the energy crisis. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of the recent progress on organic TE materials, focused on polymers and their corresponding organic composites incorporated with carbon nanofillers (including graphene and carbon nanotubes). Various strategies to enhance the TE properties, such as electrical conductivity and the Seebeck coefficient, in polymers and polymer composites will be highlighted. Then, a discussion on polymer composite based TE devices is summarized. Finally, brief conclusions and outlooks for future research efforts are presented.
由煤炭和石油等化石燃料燃烧引发的环境能源问题，以及有限的资源与不断增长的世界人口，构成了一项全球性挑战。包括太阳能、风能和生物质能在内的替代能源，已被视作满足未来能源需求的切实可行且经济实惠的解决方案。在能量转换技术中，热电（TE）材料被认为是应对当今全球能源问题的最具潜力的候选者之一。TE材料能够将诸如太阳能、汽车尾气和工业生产过程中的废热转化为有用的电压，无需移动部件，没有危险的工作化学流体，维护成本低且可靠性高。TE转换的这些优势为解决能源危机提供了方案。在此，我们全面综述了有机TE材料的最新进展，重点关注聚合物及其与碳纳米填料（包括石墨烯和碳纳米管）复合而成的有机复合材料。将着重介绍用于提高聚合物及聚合物复合材料热电性能（如电导率和塞贝克系数）的各种策略。接着，总结了基于聚合物复合材料的TE器件的相关讨论。最后，给出了简要结论以及对未来研究工作的展望。
