Improved thermoelectric properties by copolymerization of conducting with insulating monomers on carbon nanotubes

In the present work, development of carbon nanotube (CNT)/poly(conducting-co-insulating monomer) structures was proposed to improve the thermoelectric (TE) performance in CNT/polyaniline (PANI) composites. To check the validity of this idea, we prepared multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWNT)/poly(aniline-co-acrylonitrile) composites by in-situ inverted emulsion copolymerization, and applied secondary doping with camphorsulfonic acid in m-cresol medium prior to the investigation of TE properties. The samples were characterized by FT-IR, UV–Vis, 1H NMR, DSC, GPC, CHNS elemental analysis, intrinsic viscosity, SEM, XRD, electrical resistance, Seebeck coefficient, thickness, and Hall measurements. We report that nitrile groups were hydrolyzed during the polymerization reactions to provide a polymer structure exhibiting aniline, acrylamide, acrylic acid, and glutarimide groups. Further, the poly(aniline-co-acrylonitrile) that prepared in the present work were random copolymers. Importantly, we found that 30 % MWNT/70 % poly(90ANI-co-10AN) composite exhibited a 63 % higher power factor (PF) of 5.48 μW/mK2 (σ: 225 S/cm, S: 15.6 μV/K) at 35 °C than that of 30 % MWNT/70 % PANI, which exhibited a PF of about 3.37 μW/mK2 (σ: 238 S/cm, S: 11.9 μV/K). This was ascribed to the decrease of carrier concentration together with the increase of carrier mobility in the 30 % MWNT/70 % poly(90ANI-co-10AN) composite as compared to the 30 % MWNT/70 % PANI.