The studies of organic thermoelectric (TE) materials mainly focus on conductive polymers due to their conjugated molecular structures and high intrinsic electrical conductivity. When the conductive polymer is mixed with certain insulating polymers, the power factor was found enhanced. It is doubtful that the partially conjugated molecular structure is beneficial to the TE performance. Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) is an insulating polymer with a non-conjugated structure in its backbone, however, it has a partially conjugated structure after thermal treatment. In this work, a composite of PAN and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) was made and thermally treated in order to study the partially conjugated structure on the improvement of the power factor. By controlling the PAN content and the temperature of thermal treatments, a maximum power factor of 22 μW/mK² was obtained from the MWCNT/PAN composite with 45% PAN content after thermally treated at 300 °C in air, which is 300% and 80% higher than that without PAN and before thermal treatment, respectively. It is demonstrated that the partially conjugated polymers play an important role in TE performance and they are promising candidates for high-efficient organic TE materials.

有机热电（TE）材料的研究主要集中在导电聚合物上，因为它们具有共轭分子结构和高固有电导率。当将导电聚合物与某些绝缘聚合物混合时，发现功率因数得到提高。令人怀疑的是，部分共轭的分子结构是否有益于TE性能。聚丙烯腈（PAN）是在主链中具有非共轭结构的绝缘聚合物，但是，经过热处理，它具有部分共轭结构。在这项工作中，制备了PAN和多壁碳纳米管（MWCNT）的复合材料并进行了热处理，以研究提高功率因数的部分共轭结构。通过控制PAN含量和热处理温度，从MWCNT / PAN复合材料中获得²的MWCNT / PAN复合材料，在空气中于300°C进行热处理后，其PAN含量为45％，分别比不使用PAN和进行热处理之前分别高300％和80％。结果表明，部分共轭聚合物在TE性能中起着重要作用，它们是高效有机TE材料的有希望的候选者。