Organic thermoelectric (TE) materials have drawn great interest because of their advantages including mechanical flexibility, easy availability, non-toxicity and low thermal conductivity. TE materials with high dimensionless figure-of-merit ZT are required for highly efficient TE conversion. But the electrical conductivity and Seebeck coefficient of TE materials are interdependent. The increase in Seebeck coefficient is usually at the cost of the decrease in electrical conductivity. In this work, we report a facile approach to significantly enhance the TE properties of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) films by ion accumulation of an ionic liquid on the polymer surface. The ion accumulation can increase the Seebeck coefficient of the PEDOT:PSS films by 1.2–2 fold while it does not remarkably affect the electrical conductivity. The PEDOT:PSS films can exhibit an ultrahigh power factor of 754 μW m⁻¹ K⁻², corresponding to a ZT value of 0.75. This ZT value is comparable to that of inorganic TE materials like bismuth telluride at 300 K.

有机热电（TE）材料因其优点包括机械柔韧性，易获得性，无毒性和低导热性而引起了人们的极大兴趣。具有高无量纲ZT的TE材料是高效TE转换所必需的。但是TE材料的电导率和塞贝克系数是相互依赖的。塞贝克系数的增加通常是以电导率降低为代价的。在这项工作中，我们报告了一种通过离子液体在聚合物表面上的离子积累来显着增强聚（3,4-乙撑二氧噻吩）：聚苯乙烯磺酸盐（PEDOT：PSS）薄膜的TE性能的简便方法。离子积累可以将PEDOT：PSS薄膜的塞贝克系数提高1.2–2倍，而不会显着影响导电性。PEDOT：PSS膜可显示754μWm ^-1 K ^-2的超高功率因数，对应于0.75的ZT值。此ZT 该值可与300 K下的无机TE材料（如碲化铋）相媲美。