n-Type Carbon Nanotubes/Silver Telluride Nanohybrid Buckypaper with a High-Thermoelectric Figure of Merit

n-Type thermoelectric (TE) materials was made from carbon nanotube (CNT) buckypapers. We used silver telluride (Ag2Te) to achieve electron injection to the CNTs. The TE characterizations on more than 50 samples show that the CNTs/Ag2Te hybrids exhibit negative Seebeck coefficients (e.g., n-type) from -30 to -228 μV/K. Meanwhile, the tunneling coupling between the CNTs and Ag2Te increase the electrical conductance to the range of 10,000-20,000 S/m, which is higher than each single component (CNTs or Ag2Te). These n-type TE buckypapers are flexible and robust with ZT values of 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than previously reproted for CNT-based TE materials. In addition, the preparation of such buckypapers are very simple compared to a tranditonal inorganic process, without the need for hot pressing or spark sintering. These n-type TE buckypapers can provide important components for fabricating CNT-based flexible TE devices with good conversion efficiency.