Enhanced thermoelectric properties of hybridized conducting aerogels based on carbon nanotubes and pyrolyzed resorcinol–formaldehyde resin

• We prepared hybridized conducting aerogels based on MWCNTs and carbonized RF resin.
• This type of hybridized conducting aerogels is light weight.
• The unique porous structure and connective network allow independent tuning of thermoelectric parameters.
• Incorporation of MWCNTs allows an improvement of two orders of magnitude in the figure of merit.

In the present work, we prepare hybridized conducting aerogels based on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and carbonized resorcinol-formaldehyde (RF) resin. We find that incorporation of MWCNTs into the hybridized conducting aerogels simultaneously increases the electrical conductivity and the Seebeck coefficient, and at the same time depresses the thermal conductivity. It demonstrates that the three thermoelectric parameters can be independently tuned in the unique structures of hybridized conducting aerogels, which provides a potential way to overcome the challenge in bulk semiconductors that increasing electrical conductivity is generally accompanied with decreased Seebeck coefficient and increased thermal conductivity. As a result, the hybridized conducting aerogels show an improvement of two orders of magnitude in the figure of merit (ZT), compared with that of pure carbonized RF aerogel.

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