Ambient-Stable n-Type Carbon Nanotube/Organic Small-Molecule Thermoelectrics Enabled by Energy Level Control

Tae-Hoon Kim; Jae Gyu Jang; Sung Hyun Kim; Jong-In Hong

doi:10.1021/acsami.3c09222

Ambient-Stable n-Type Carbon Nanotube/Organic Small-Molecule Thermoelectrics Enabled by Energy Level Control

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2023 Oct 11;15(40):46872-46880. doi: 10.1021/acsami.3c09222. Epub 2023 Sep 29.

Authors

Tae-Hoon Kim¹, Jae Gyu Jang², Sung Hyun Kim², Jong-In Hong¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea.
² Department of Carbon Convergence Engineering, Wonkwang University, Iksan 54538, Korea.

PMID: 37774009
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.3c09222

Abstract

The stability of n-type organic and hybrid thermoelectric materials is limited in terms of their practical application to p-n parallel thermoelectric devices. We demonstrate the ambient stability of an n-type single-walled carbon nanotube/organic small-molecule (SWNT/OSM) hybrid by deepening the lowest occupied molecular orbital energy level. This hybrid exhibited the best figure of merit (0.032) among n-type SWNT/OSM hybrid thermoelectrics and an enhanced power factor of 291.0 μW m^-1 K^-2. Furthermore, we observed that the n-type thermoelectric stability of a hybrid of SWNT and pip containing two N-ethylpiperidinyl groups on both sides of a naphthalenediimide core was retained at 87% over 7 months (220 days) under ambient conditions without encapsulation.

Keywords: ambient stability; carbon nanotube; energy level; n-type organic hybrid thermoelectrics; organic small molecule; thermoelectric figure of merit.