Recently, organic materials have emerged as next-generation thermoelectric (TE) materials because of their unique advantages including low cost, high mechanical flexibility, low or no toxicity, and low intrinsic thermal conductivity over inorganic TE materials. However, the Seebeck coefficient of organic materials with high TE properties is remarkably lower than that of its inorganic counterparts. Therefore, it is important to improve their Seebeck coefficient and thus, overall TE properties. A high-performance TE material should have high Seebeck coefficient and high conductivity, but there is a trade-off relationship between these two parameters. Lowering the charge carrier concentration can increase the Seebeck coefficient while decreasing the conductivity. A solution is to adopt energy filtering that can remarkably increase the Seebeck coefficient while only slightly lowering the conductivity. In this article, we review energy filtering methods to enhance the Seebeck coefficient and power factor of organic TE materials, including the composite formation with inorganic TE nanomaterials or carbon nanomaterials, composition formation of p- and n-type materials, and surface energy filtering induced by the dipole moment or ionic accumulations. Finally, a prospect is provided for the development of high-performance organic TE materials by energy filtering.

最近，有机材料因其独特的优势而成为下一代热电 (TE) 材料，包括与无机热电材料相比，其成本低、机械柔韧性高、毒性低或无毒性以及本征热导率低。然而，具有高热电性能的有机材料的塞贝克系数明显低于其无机材料的塞贝克系数。因此，重要的是提高它们的塞贝克系数，从而提高整体 TE 特性。高性能 TE 材料应该具有高塞贝克系数和高电导率，但这两个参数之间存在权衡关系。降低电荷载流子浓度可以增加塞贝克系数，同时降低电导率。一种解决方案是采用能量过滤，可以显着提高塞贝克系数，而仅略微降低电导率。在本文中，我们回顾了提高有机热电材料的塞贝克系数和功率因数的能量过滤方法，包括与无机热电纳米材料或碳纳米材料的复合形成，p型和n型材料，以及偶极矩或离子积累引起的表面能过滤。最后，为通过能量过滤开发高性能有机热电材料提供了前景。