Our scientists have made breakthroughs in flexible thermoelectric material technology, turning plastic films into "energy converters"

According to a report from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Chemistry, a team led by academician Zhu Daoben and researcher Di Chong’an, together with domestic collaborators, has successfully developed a plastic thermoelectric thin film with an irregular, multi-level porous structure. Its core performance metric, thermoelectric figure of merit (zT), has surpassed 1.64, setting a world record for performance in the same temperature range for flexible thermoelectric materials. This provides key material support for the development of technologies such as wearable devices, attachable cooling, and Internet of Things sensors. The research team prepared the material using a “polymer phase separation” method; it is compatible with spray-coating processes and can be formed in a single step, significantly reducing manufacturing difficulty compared with earlier technologies. This new type of thermoelectric plastic thin film achieves the historic breakthrough of zT values exceeding 1.5 for polymer thermoelectric materials, creating a world record for flexible thermoelectric materials. This breakthrough not only drives polymer thermoelectric materials past the practical application threshold, but also deepens our understanding of the thermoelectric conversion laws of soft-matter materials, offering a clear roadmap for subsequent research. In the future, ordinary plastics may be transformed into micro power stations, turning ubiquitous waste heat into valuable energy.