The Polymer Society of Korea

Abstract

FeCl₃ is a well-known strong oxidizing agent for polymerization catalyst and p-type dopant. Despite many studies on each role separately, there is a few studies on the simultaneous use of both functions in a single-reagent process for polymerization and doping. In this study, we synthesized organic conjugated polymers by copolymerizing 4H-cyclopenta[2,1-b:3,4-b']dithiophene(CPDT) and 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene(EDOT) for organic thermoelectrics via a simple FeCl3 oxidative coupling reaction at room temperature. The synthesized copolymers were named PCPDT, PCE10, PCE20, and PCE40, corresponding to EDOT ratios of 0%, 10%, 20%, and 40% in the polymer.  At the optimal EDOT ratio of 20%, a more than 10-fold enhancement in PFs was achieved reaching up to 0.182 ± 0.021 μW m⁻¹ K⁻².