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Fabrication of Conductive Macroporous Structures Through Nano-phase Separation Method

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Abstract

Thermoelectric power generation performance is characterized on the basis of the figure of merit, which tends to be high in thermoelectric materials with high electrical conductivity and low thermal conductivity. Porous structures cause phonon scattering, which decreases thermal conductivity. In this study, we fabricated porous structures for thermoelectric devices via nano-phase separation of silica particles from a polyacrylonitrile (PAN) matrix via a sol–gel process. The porosity was determined by control of silica particle size with various the mixing ratio of tetraethylorthosilicate as the precursor of silica particles to PAN. High electrical conductivity was maintained by subsequent carbonization of the PAN matrix in spited of a high porosity. As the results, the conductive porous structures having porosity from 13.9 to 83.3 (%) was successfully fabricated, keeping their electrical conductivities.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (NRF-2017R1A2B2010552 and 2015R1A5A7037615) and Civil Military Technology Cooperation Center (15-CM-SS-03 and 15-CM-EN-08).

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  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Kookmin University, Seoul, 02707, Korea

    Soohyun Kim & Hyunjung Lee

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  1. Soohyun Kim
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  2. Hyunjung Lee
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Correspondence to Hyunjung Lee.

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Kim, S., Lee, H. Fabrication of Conductive Macroporous Structures Through Nano-phase Separation Method. Electron. Mater. Lett. 14, 83–88 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13391-018-0014-5

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