Effective treatment methods on PEDOT:PSS to enhance its thermoelectric performance

To date, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonic acid) (PEDOT:PSS) is considered to be one of the most successful organic thermoelectric (TE) material with a figure-of-merit (ZT) breakthrough of 0.42 in its field. It is highly expected to achieve higher performance for real application in the near future due to its great TE potential. Numerous effective treatment methods such as pre-treatments and post-treatments on PEDOT:PSS dispersions or films by polar organic solvents, non-ionic surfactant polymers, acids or alkalis and reducing reagents have been developed to enhance its TE performance, which are randomly distributed in different literatures from 14 research groups. To facilitate further research, in this mini-review, we summarize these methods and expound the origin of TE enhancement as well as that the future efforts and strategies are suggested. We are truly expecting this mini-review can be greatly helpful for further research and pave the way for developing more efficient organic TE materials. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.