One-pot fabrication and thermoelectric properties of Ag nanoparticles-polyaniline hybrid nanocomposites

In this context, a one-pot and in situ strategy for fabrication of AgNPs (Ag nanoparticles)/PANI (polyaniline) nanocomposites in a micellar solution of dodecylbenzene sulfonic acid (DBSA, anionic surfactant) is introduced. Guided by this strategy, AgNPs were directly synthesized from silver nitrate. AgNPs/PANI hybrid nanocomposites with AgNPs were consolidated via spark plasma sintering (SPS). The phase structure and microstructure of the as-prepared composites were evaluated by several characterizations, and the growth mechanism of AgNPs was speculated. The thermoelectric properties of the samples with increasing silver nitrate content were systematically investigated. Compared with pure bulk PANI, the thermoelectric performance of AgNPs/PANI hybrid nanocomposites exhibits a distinct enhancement on the addition of AgNPs. The Seebeck coefficient (S) decreased slightly while the electric conductivity (s) was found to increase remarkably. However, thermal conductivity (k) remained unchanged with increasing silver nitrate content, which resulted in an obvious enhancement in the figure of merit (ZT) of the composites. Consequently, the maximum ZT of the AgNPs/PANI hybrid nanocomposites amazingly reached 5.73 x 10(-5), which is about 3.8 times of the ZT of the pure PANI (1.503 x 10(-5)). This study suggests that the hybridization of organic/low-dimensional metal particles is promising to effectively improve the thermoelectric properties of conducting polymers.