Flexible Molybdenum Disulfide/Carbon Nanotube Composite Films for Thermoelectric Applications

Abstract

Earth-abundant molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ) shows a high application potential in thermoelectric (TE) field owing to its high Seebeck coefficient. However, the main obstacle to achieve high TE performance for the MoS 2 material is its poor electrical conductivity. In this work, the flexible MoS 2 /single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) films with enhanced TE performance were fabricated via hydrothermal reaction, solution mixing, and subsequent vacuum filtration. The strong S–π interaction and the energy filtering effect at the MoS 2 /SWCNT interface produced an impressive power factor value of 107.99 ± 4.98 μW·m −1 ·K −2 for the MoS 2 /SWCNT composite films. In addition, the TE performance had high stability on bending deformation. Finally, at a temperature difference of 50 K, the assembled TE device of MoS 2 /SWCNT films exhibited good output performance. This work provides a feasible reference to optimize the TE performance of MoS 2 materials and demonstrates a high potential of flexible MoS 2 -based composites in TE applications.