Enhancing the thermoelectric performance by defect structures induced in p-type polypyrrole-polyaniline nanocomposite for room-temperature thermoelectric applications

Organic thermoelectric materials mainly conducting polymers are green materials that can convert heat energy into electrical energy and vice versa at room temperature. In the present work, we investigated the thermoelectric properties of polymer nanocomposite of polypyrrole (PPy) and polyaniline (PANI) (PPy/PANI) by varying the pyrrole: aniline monomer ratios (60:40, 50:50, and 40:60). The PPy/PANI composite is prepared by in-situ chemical polymerization of PPy on PANI dispersion. It has been observed that the combination of two conducting polymers has enhanced the electrical and thermal properties in the PPy/PANI composite due to the strong π–π stacking and H-bonding interaction between the conjugated structure of PPy and conjugated structure of PANI. The maximum electrical conductivity of 14.7 S m−1 was obtained for composite with high pyrrole content, whereas the maximum Seebeck coefficient of 29.5 μV K−1 was obtained for composite with high aniline content at 366 K. Consequently, the PPy/PANI composite with pyrrole to aniline monomer ratio of 60:40 exhibits the optimal electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, and high power factor. As a result, the maximum power factor of 2.24 nWm−1 K−2 was obtained for the PPy/PANI composite at 60:40 pyrrole to aniline monomer ratio, which is 29 times and 65.8 times higher than PPy (0.077 nWm−1 K−2) and PANI (0.034 nWm−1 K−2), respectively.