Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, July 25 (Reporter Zhang Quan) The reporter learned from the Chinese Academy of Sciences that my country's scientific research team has successfully developed a high-performance plastic-based thermoelectric material. The material is light and soft, and can also generate electricity using temperature differences. It has important application prospects in the fields of wearable energy devices.

The research was jointly completed by the team of the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the team of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and their collaborators, and the relevant results were published in the international academic journal "Nature" on the 24th.

High-performance plastic-based thermoelectric material

Schematic diagram of the structure of the high-performance plastic-based thermoelectric material developed by the team.

(Photo provided by the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)

"Many conductive polymers can be used as thermoelectric materials. When a temperature difference is applied to this material, an electromotive force will be generated at both ends of the material; when a conductive circuit is built at both ends of this material and a voltage is applied, a temperature difference will also be generated at both ends of the material." The corresponding author of the article, Di Chong'an, a researcher at the Institute of Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced.

"Based on these phenomena, people can use lightweight and soft plastics to achieve temperature difference power generation, develop attached and wearable energy devices, and clothing that can control temperature." Di Chong'an said that the realization of these functions requires the development of high-performance polymer thermoelectric materials. However, the thermoelectric figure of merit, the core performance indicator of existing polymers, has always remained around 0.5, which cannot meet these application requirements.

In this study, the team proposed and constructed a polymer multi-period heterojunction (PMHJ) thermoelectric material. Test results show that the thermoelectric figure of merit of this material under specific temperature conditions reaches 1.28, which exceeds the performance level of commercial materials in the same temperature range. At the same time, the team used solution method technology to achieve large-area preparation of PMHJ films.

Industry experts believe that the excellent performance of PMHJ materials makes it have important application potential in the research and development of flexible energy supply devices. At the same time, the successful development of PMHJ materials also provides a new path for the continuous breakthrough of the performance of plastic-based thermoelectric materials.

Source: Xinhuanet