Prospects of low dimensional organic materials for thermoelectric applications

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to present briefly the state-of-art and to analyze the prospects of thermoelectricity based on organic materials. It is shown that low dimensional nanostructured organic crystals have the highest prospects for thermoelectric applications. In these crystals, the density of electronic states is increased due to the low dimensionality of carrier spectrum and the interdependence between electrical conductivity, thermopower and the electronic thermal conductivity is somewhat overcome due to more diverse internal interactions. The thermoelectric properties of tetrathiotetracene–iodide crystals, TTT2I3 are analyzed in the frame of a more complete 3D physical model and the optimal parameters are determined in order to achieve values of the thermoelectric figure of merit at room temperature of ZT ~ 2 and even higher.