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ABSTRACT Thermoelectric power generation, allowing recovery of part of the energy wasted as heat, is emerging as an important component of renewable energy and energy efficiency portfolios.

Although inorganic semiconductors have traditionally been employed in thermoelectric applications, organic semiconductors garner increasing attention as versatile thermoelectric materials.

Here we present a combined theoretical and experimental study suggesting that semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes with carefully controlled chirality distribution and carrier

density are capable of large thermoelectric power factors, higher than 340 μW m−1 K−2, comparable to the best-performing conducting polymers and larger than previously observed for carbon

nanotube films. Furthermore, we demonstrate that phonons are the dominant source of thermal conductivity in the networks, and that our carrier doping process significantly reduces the

thermal conductivity relative to undoped networks. These findings provide the scientific underpinning for improved functional organic thermoelectric composites with carbon nanotube

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Contact customer support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS ENHANCING THERMOELECTRIC PROPERTIES OF SINGLE-WALLED CARBON NANOTUBES USING HALIDE COMPOUNDS AT ROOM TEMPERATURE AND ABOVE

Article Open access 21 April 2021 MACROSCOPIC WEAVABLE FIBERS OF CARBON NANOTUBES WITH GIANT THERMOELECTRIC POWER FACTOR Article Open access 13 August 2021 BOOSTING THERMOELECTRIC

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vibrations in amorphous silicon nitride near room temperature. _Phys. Rev. B_ 87, 214305 (2013). Article  Google Scholar  Download references ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The investigation of the

thermoelectric properties of the SWCNT networks carried out by the NREL authors was performed under a grant from the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program at the National

Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The development of the s-SWCNT separations at NREL was funded by the Solar Photochemistry Program, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and

Biosciences, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy (DOE). NREL is supported by the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. E.M.M. would like to thank

the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Director’s Fellowship for funding. B.H.Z. and S.L.G. would like to thank the Department of Energy, Office of Science, Science Undergraduate

Laboratory Internship (SULI) Program for funding. Work at KAIST was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (2015R1A2A2A05027766) and Global Frontier R&D (2011-0031566:

Center for Multiscale Energy Systems) programmes. Work at D.U. is supported by NSF-DMR (DMR-0847796 and DMR-1410247). This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated

Nanotechnologies, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science by Los Alamos National Laboratory (Contract DE-AC52-06NA25396) and

Sandia National Laboratories (Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000). AUTHOR INFORMATION Author notes * Sarah L. Guillot Present address: † Present address: Department of Chemistry, University of

Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA., AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Chemistry and Nanoscience Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colorado 80401, USA Azure D. Avery, Ben

H. Zhou, Elisa M. Miller, Rachelle Ihly, Kevin S. Mistry, Sarah L. Guillot, Jeffrey L. Blackburn & Andrew J. Ferguson * Graduate School of Nanoscience and Technology, Korea Advanced

Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-701, Republic of Korea Jounghee Lee, Eui-Sup Lee & Yong-Hyun Kim * Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Denver, Denver,

Colorado 80208, USA Devin Wesenberg & Barry L. Zink Authors * Azure D. Avery View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Ben H. Zhou View

author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Jounghee Lee View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Eui-Sup

Lee View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Elisa M. Miller View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google

Scholar * Rachelle Ihly View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Devin Wesenberg View author publications You can also search for this author

inPubMed Google Scholar * Kevin S. Mistry View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Sarah L. Guillot View author publications You can also search

for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Barry L. Zink View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Yong-Hyun Kim View author publications You can

also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Jeffrey L. Blackburn View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Andrew J. Ferguson View

author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CONTRIBUTIONS A.D.A., B.H.Z., R.I., K.S.M. and S.L.G. fabricated various polymer:s-SWCNT thin films. A.D.A.,

B.H.Z., J.L.B. and A.J.F. characterized the thermoelectric and optical properties of polymer:s-SWCNT thin films. J.L., E.-S.L. and Y.-H.K. conducted the theoretical calculations. E.M.M.

conducted the photoelectron spectroscopy characterization. D.W. and B.L.Z. conducted the thermal conductivity measurements and some electrical conductivity measurements. A.D.A. and R.I.

measured film thickness using atomic force microscopy. A.D.A., B.L.Z., Y.-H.K., J.L.B. and A.J.F. provided theoretical insight, data interpretation and project direction. A.D.A., J.L.,

E.-S.L., E.M.M., B.L.Z., Y.-H.K., J.L.B. and A.J.F. were involved in the redaction of the manuscript. CORRESPONDING AUTHORS Correspondence to Jeffrey L. Blackburn or Andrew J. Ferguson.

ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The authors declare no competing financial interests. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Notes

19, Supplementary Figures 1–10, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary References. (PDF 1171 kb) RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Avery, A.,

Zhou, B., Lee, J. _et al._ Tailored semiconducting carbon nanotube networks with enhanced thermoelectric properties. _Nat Energy_ 1, 16033 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2016.33

Download citation * Received: 03 September 2015 * Accepted: 23 February 2016 * Published: 04 April 2016 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2016.33 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the

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