Conclusion

The development of polymers for thermoelectricity is a relatively recent field of research.

Their low cost and toxicity, flexibility and light weight are all assets for their use in the field of waste heat recovery, especially for applications in portable devices. Recent syntheses of new n-type polymers, with good thermoelectric performance and, above all, stability under ambient conditions, now make it possible to design their integration into commercial devices. However, there are still a number of aspects to be improved before such commercialization is possible.

First of all, to benefit from the advantages of ambipolar architecture (which uses a p-type polymer branch and an n-type polymer branch in the same device), the thermoelectric performance of the two branches must be comparable. Particularly in the case of n-type polymers, this...