Organic covalent modification to improve thermoelectric properties of TaS2

Shaozhi Wang; Xiao Yang; Lingxiang Hou; Xueping Cui; Xinghua Zheng; Jian Zheng

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-32058-w

Organic covalent modification to improve thermoelectric properties of TaS₂

Nat Commun. 2022 Jul 29;13(1):4401. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-32058-w.

Authors

Shaozhi Wang^#^{1

2}, Xiao Yang^#^{2

3}, Lingxiang Hou^{1

2}, Xueping Cui⁴, Xinghua Zheng^{5

6}, Jian Zheng⁷

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
³ Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
⁴ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China. cuixueping@iccas.ac.cn.
⁵ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China. zhengxh@iet.cn.
⁶ Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China. zhengxh@iet.cn.
⁷ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China. zhengjian@iccas.ac.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Organic semiconductors are attracting considerable attention as a new thermoelectric material because of their molecular diversity, non-toxicity and easy processing. The side chains which are introduced into two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) by covalent modification lead to a significant decrease in their thermal conductivity. Here, we describe a simple approach to preparing the side chains covalent modification TaS₂ (SCCM-TaS₂) organic/inorganic hybrid structures, which is a homogeneous and non-destructive technique that does not depend on defects and boundaries. Electrical conductivity of 3,401 S cm^-1 and a power factor of 0.34 mW m^-1 K^-2 are obtained for a hybrid material of SCCM-TaS₂, with an in-plane thermal conductivity of 4.0 W m^-1 K^-1, which is 7 times smaller than the thermal conductivity of the pristine TaS₂ crystal. The power factor and low thermal conductivity contribute to a thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) of ~0.04 at 443 K.