Morphology-engineered spider silk–carbon nanotube composites for high-performance and sustainable thermoelectric energy harvesting, Chemical Engineering Journal524,169375(2025)
Chih-Wei Hsu, Ming-Yan Shen, Yi-Jen Wang, Shao-Huan Hong, Yu Liu, Hsuan-Chen Wu*, Wen-Chang Chen*, Cheng-Liang Liu*
2026/01/27
Bio-based thermoelectric composites often face intrinsic challenges in achieving precise interfacial control and structural integration, which limit further optimization of thermoelectric performance. Here, two engineered variants—hydrophobic-rich R1 and hydrophilic-rich R2—were integrated with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to investigate how protein─CNT interfacial interactions regulate composite morphology and microstructure, thereby enhancing thermoelectric performance. Ethanol-induced structural ordering generated distinct morphologies that enhanced the Seebeck coefficient and suppressed thermal conductivity. The resulting composites exhibited figure-of-merit (ZT) values of 0.38 and 0.33 for CNT/R1 and CNT/R2, respectively. Notably, the optimized CNT/R2-based thermoelectric generator (TEG) demonstrated an energy conversion efficiency of 8.2%. This work reveals how bio-nano interfacial design governs energy transport and offers a scalable, bio-based strategy for building high-performance thermoelectric composites tailored for next-generation wearable energy harvesting.
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