Thermoelectric properties of a p-n-module made of organic materials

Abstract

A thermoelectric module made from organic materials of p-type TTT2I3 and n-type TTT(TCNQ)2 is proposed as an efficient device for direct waste heat-to-electricity conversion. Thermoelectric coefficients of the mentioned quasi-one dimensional organic crystals are modeled numerically as function of dimensionless Fermi energy on the base of more realistic three-dimensional physical model. More diverse and complicated internal interactions are considered. It is demonstrated that rather high values of thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) can be obtained by applying optimization procedures, such as the carrier’s concentration tuning and the purification of the crystal. In this paper, the results are summarized and the average device ZT is calculated. The total efficiency of the p-n module is estimated for different values of the crystals parameters.