Investigation of non-covalent interactions in Polypyrrole/Polyaniline/Carbon black ternary complex for enhanced thermoelectric properties via interfacial carrier scattering and π-π stacking.

The thermoelectric (TE) performance of conducting polymers can be improved by the incorporation of carbon nanomaterials. In this work, the impact of carbon black (CB) on polypyrrole (PPy) and polypyrrole/polyaniline (PPy/PANI) binary composite have been investigated. Herein, PPy/PANI binary composite was initially prepared through chemical oxidative polymerization and then solution mixed with CB to form PPy/PANI/CB ternary nanocomposite. The structural and morphological analyses confirmed the formation of composites, and the strong interaction present between polymer matrix and CB. This was further confirmed by theoretical study, which showed strong noncovalent interaction and high complex stability between the materials. The thermoelectric results showed that both the electrical conductivity (σ) and Seebeck coefficient (S) has been increased with the increase in CB content (from 10 wt% to 30 wt%) and temperature (303 K to 373 K), while the thermal conductivity (κ) increase was low. The ternary nanocomposite involving 30 wt% of CB was found to be the most promising material which showed an enhanced power factor (PF) of 0.0251 µW/mK2 and high figure of merit (ZT) of 4.37x10-5 at 370 K. The enhancement in ZT for PPy/PANI/CB ternary composite is 2 times, 316 times, 17.3 times, 3.97 times, 11.7 times, and 6.8 times greater than other samples. The enhancement in power factor and ZT was due to energy filtering effect and strong non-covalent interactions between the homopolymers and CB.

EXAFS and XANES investigation of (Li, Ni) codoped ZnO thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition.

Ni doped, Li doped and (Li, Ni) codoped ZnO thin films were successfully grown using a pulsed laser deposition technique. Undoped and doped ZnO thin films were investigated using extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) and x-ray absorption near edge spectroscopy (XANES). Preliminary investigations on the Zn K-edge of the undoped and doped ZnO thin films revealed that doping has not influenced the average Zn-Zn bond length and Debye-Waller factor. This shows that both Ni and Li doping do not appreciably affect the average local environment of Zn. All the doped ZnO thin films exhibited more than 50% of substitutional Ni, with a maximum of 77% for 2% Ni and 2% Li doped ZnO thin film. The contribution of Ni metal to the EXAFS signal clearly reveals the presence of Ni clusters. The Ni-Ni distance in the Ni(0) nanoclusters, which are formed in the film, is shorter with respect to the reference Ni metal foil and the Debye-Waller factor is higher. Both facts perfectly reflect what is expected for metal nanoparticles. At the highest doping concentration (5%), the presence of Li favors the growth of a secondary NiO phase. Indeed, 2% Ni and 5% Li doped ZnO thin film shows %Nisub = 75 ± 11, %Nimet = 10 ± 8, %NiO = 15 ± 8. XANES studies further confirm that the substitutional Ni is more than 50% in all the samples. These results explain the observed magnetic properties.