Selectively tuning ionic thermopower in all-solid-state flexible polymer composites for thermal sensing

C Chi and M An and X Qi and Y Li and RH Zhang and GZ Liu and CJ Lin and H Huang and H Dang and B Demir and Y Wang and WG Ma and BL Huang and X Zhang, NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 13, 221 (2022).

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27885-2

There has been increasing interest in the emerging ionic thermoelectric materials with huge ionic thermopower. However, it's challenging to selectively tune the thermopower of all-solid-state polymer materials because the transportation of ions in all-solid-state polymers is much more complex than those of liquid-dominated gels. Herein, this work provides all-solid-state polymer materials with a wide tunable thermopower range (+20 similar to-6 mV K-1), which is different from previously reported gels. Moreover, the mechanism of p-n conversion in all-solid-state ionic thermoelectric polymer material at the atomic scale was presented based on the analysis of Eastman entropy changes by molecular dynamics simulation, which provides a general strategy for tuning ionic thermopower and is beneficial to understand the fundamental mechanism of the p-n conversion. Furthermore, a self-powered ionic thermoelectric thermal sensor fabricated by the developed p- and n-type polymers demonstrated high sensitivity and durability, extending the application of ionic thermoelectric materials.

Return to Publications page