Investigating the Effects of Water Uptake on Nanoscale Morphology and Conductivity in Solution-Processed Nanocomposites

Thermoelectric materials convert between electrical energy and thermal energy. The ubiquity of waste heat is a source of carbon free energy that requires next-generation thermoelectric materials to effectively recover. Due to their low material and manufacturing costs and large number of routes for optimization, solution-processed nanocomposites are strong candidates for scalable next-generation thermoelectric materials. One such optimization route is through water uptake in solution processed conducting polymers. The ability to create composites with solution-processed materials provides another control, with the formation of interpenetrating continuous networks of components that exhibit large interfacial areas. Models of electron transport in composite materials often use an effective medium approximation that treats the interpenetrating materials as combinations of individual parallel and series phases. We investigate the effects of water uptake in solution-processed nanocomposite materials to improve existing transport models by connecting nanoscale morphology with macrospic conductivity and Seebeck coefficient measurements.