Impact of Different Weight Fractions of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles on Polyaniline/Zinc Oxide Nanocomposites for Thermoelectric Applications

PANI/ZnO nanocomposites are synthesised via the sol-gel method by increasing the weight fraction of ZnO. SEM observations show that all nanocomposites contain spherical particles. The particle nature and size of the nanocomposites are determined by XRD. The electrical conductivity of the nanocomposites increases from 18.6 to 29.3 mS/cm as the temperature rises from 30°C to 90°C, whereas the thermal conductivity falls from 1.001 to 0.478 Wm^–1K^–1. The PANI/6 wt.% ZnO nanocomposite provides the best figure of merit value of 0.006. The thermoelectric characteristics of the nanocomposites improve when the ZnO-to-polyaniline weight ratio increases.