Nanostructured Thermoelectric Composites

We propose to develop synthesis and processing approaches to high density semiconductor quantum dot/conducting polymer nanocomposites that exhibit improved efficiencies in thermoelectric devices. The best thermoelectric semiconductors currently have a dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT, of approximately 1. Doubling or tripling ZT will increase the range of application and market size of ther-moelectric devices by a factor much larger than 2 or 3. Nanocomposites of thermoelectric semiconductor quantum dots with conducting polymers are a promising means for realizing such high ZT in a low cost material. The proposed interdisciplinary effort utilizes the combined expertise of the PI's in materials modeling, polymer nanocomposite processing and chemistry, inorganic nanomaterials and heat transfer. Innovative aspects of our approach include 1) One step fabrication of polymer nanocomposites that have the semiconductor dots bonded directly to the polymer backbone, facilitating the electrical transport that is critical to improved performance, 2) Fabrication of stretched conducting polymer nanofiber/quantum dot nanocomposites that should exhibit improved transport behavior because of the orientation of the polymer chains, 3) Application of state of the art modeling techniques to understanding the thermoelectric properties of the nanocomposites and how to modify them for improved behavior.