n-type thermoelectric performance of functionalized carbon nanotube-filled polymer compositesn型热电功能化碳nanotube-filled聚合物复合材料的性能.pdfVIP

N-Type Thermoelectric Performance of Functionalized Carbon Nanotube-Filled Polymer Composites Dallas D. Freeman, Kyungwho Choi, Choongho Yu* Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas AM University, College Station, Texas, United States of America Abstract Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were functionalized with polyethyleneimine (PEI) and made into composites with polyvinyl acetate (PVAc). CNTs were dispersed with different amounts of sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) prior to the PEI functionalization. The resulting samples exhibit air-stable n-type characteristics with electrical conductivities as great as 1500 S/m and thermopowers as large as 2100 mV/K. Electrical conductivity and thermopower were strongly affected by CNT dispersion, improving the properties with better dispersion with high concentrations of SDBS. This improvement is believed to be due to the increase in the number of tubes that are evenly coated with PEI in a better-dispersed sample. Increasing the amount of PEI relative to the other constituents positively affects thermopower but not conductivity. Air exposure reduces both thermopower and conductivity presumably due to oxygen doping (which makes CNTs p-type), but stable values were reached within seven days following sample fabrication. Citation: Freeman DD, Choi K, Yu C (2012) N-Type Thermoelectric Performance of Functionalized Carbon Nanotube-Filled Polymer Composites. PLoS ONE 7(11): e47822. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0047822 Editor: Aristides Docoslis, Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada Received April 30, 2012; Accepted September 17, 2012; Published November 2, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Freeman et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the or