Abstract: Devices made of thermoelectric materials are capable of realizing the interconversion between heat and electricity, which bases on the Seebeck effect and Peltier effect, respectively, without the use of moving elements. Different from conventional metallic and inorganic thermoelectric materials, thermoelectric polymer composites possess good flexibility, decent stretchability, and healing ability, thus arousing ever-increasing interests in researchers because they are abundant, inexpensive, light-weighted, less or none toxic, and thermally less conductive. Generally, thermoelectric polymer composites comprise nanomaterials which are usually carbon nanotubes, graphene, metal organic frameworks, MXenes, black phosphorous, etc. and conductive polymers which are typically polythiophene and its derivatives, polyaniline, and polypyrrole. Apart from traditional use of generating electricity from heat for thermoelectric materials, polymer composites acting as an indispensable compliment to inorganic thermoelectric materials have combined advantages of conductive polymers and nanomaterials and are finding new applications in various sensors although their performance in certain aspects remains below that of conventional metallic and inorganic thermoelectric materials. New toolkits like artificial intelligence and machine learning have been introduced as effective ways in facilitating efficient design, preparation, and performance enhancement of thermoelectric polymer composites. It’s expected that thermoelectric polymer composites will make great progress and demonstrate much broad application scenarios.

Key words: polymer composites, thermoelectric properties, applications