Events

Enhanced Charge Transport in P3HT-Tellurium Hybrid Materials for High Thermoelectric Performance. Iris Nanhakumar, Southampton University.

Date:	Wednesday 6 November 2024 14:00 - 15:00
Location:	ENG324

Enhanced Charge Transport in P3HT-Tellurium Hybrid Materials for High Thermoelectric Performance

Iris Nanhakumar, Southampton University.

I will present the results of a study on hybrid composite films of tellurium (Te) nanowires with poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) in which the effects of molecular weight of (P3HT) and the lengths of(Te) nanowires on the thermoelectric transport properties were systematically investigated. Our findings indicate that the integration of longer Te nanowires (~13 micrometer) with P3HT of different molecular weights (ranging from 50 to 143 kDa) enhances the thermoelectric properties of the hybrid material, resulting in a power factor of 303 ± 38 µW/mK2 for Te80-P3HT20 hybrid material with optimal doping. Thermal conductivity measurements were performed, and a value of 0.25 ± 0.03 W/mK was achieved for Te80-P3HT20 with a zT value of 0.36 at room temperature, which represents the highest reported value for such Te-P3HT based hybrid materials to date. This research offers critical insights into the synergistic effects of nanowire length and polymer molecular weight.

Iris Nandhakumar is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Southampton. Her research interests focus on the rationale design, fabrication and characterization of nanoscale materials for applications in energy harvesting, energy storage, electrocatalysis and optoelectronics. She has widely published in prestigious peer- reviewed journals such as Nano Letters, ACS Nano and Physical Review Letters and has obtained research funding as both PI and co-I from a variety of funding bodies totalling > £ 5M. She currently holds 2 substantial EPSRC grants as PI in the area of thermoelectric energy harvesting and heat transport and has been very successful in securing beamtime at Diamond Light Source and ISIS. Iris earned her PhD from the University of Southampton in Physical Chemistry. She was awarded an MPhil in Physics from Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, and a first-class degree from the Technical University of Berlin as a Diplom-Chemiker. She held visiting positions as a research scholar in the US at the University of California Irvine and the University of Georgia Athens.