Recently, the development of thermoelectric materials has attracted ever-growing attention, especially for organic thermoelectric materials. Organic semi-conductors have the characteristics of lightweight, low cost, good flexibility, easily modifiable structures and low intrinsic thermal conductivity. They have unique advantages in power generation and refrigeration at low temperature and within narrow temperature diffe-rence, resulting in promising application potential in thermoelectric materials. Among them, the research of p-type organic thermoelectric materials has gained significant progress, and the state-of-the-art materials can exhibit a conductivity higher than 1 000 S/cm, with thermoelectric properties close to those of inorganic materials. In contrast, the development of n-type organic thermoelectric materials is relatively slower. In particular, their electrical conductivity needs to be further improved. The main approach for improving the performance of n-type organic thermoelectric materials is to regulate the electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and Seebeck coefficient via molecular backbone designing and side-chain tailo-ring, and then introduce the dopant for doping modification to further improve the thermoelectric properties. Because the organic solid phase is mainly amorphous and the intermolecular interaction is quite complicated, the doping mechanisms can hardly be figured out, resulting in the slow development of the research of doping modification. Fortunately, a lot of results reported in literature have proliferated, which makes the doping mechanism gradually clear, and make the related theories more and more systematic. In this paper, the research progress of modifying n-type organic thermoelectric materials by adopting the scheme of doping is reviewed; in addition, the existing problems and the developing perspective of this field are discussed. © 2022, Materials Review Magazine. All right reserved.
