Enhanced thermoelectric properties of hybridized conducting aerogels based on carbon nanotubes and pyrolyzed resorcinol-formaldehyde resin

In the present work, we prepare hybridized conducting aerogels based on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and carbonized resorcinol-formaldehyde (RF) resin. We find that incorporation of MWCNTs into the hybridized conducting aerogels simultaneously increases the electrical conductivity and the Seebeck coefficient, and at the same time depresses the thermal conductivity. It demonstrates that the three thermoelectric parameters can be independently tuned in the unique structures of hybridized conducting aerogels, which provides a potential way to overcome the challenge in bulk semiconductors that increasing electrical conductivity is generally accompanied with decreased Seebeck coefficient and increased thermal conductivity. As a result, the hybridized conducting aerogels show an improvement of two orders of magnitude in the figure of merit (ZT), compared with that of pure carbonized RF aerogel. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.