Abstract
The ultra-low thermal conductivity of bulk polymers may be enhanced by combining them with high thermal conductivity materials such as carbon nanotubes. Different from random doping, we find that the aligned carbon nanotube-polyethylene composites has a high thermal conductivity by non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. The analyses indicate that the aligned composite not only take advantage of the high thermal conduction of carbon nanotubes, but enhance thermal conduction of polyethylene chains.
Highlights
Polymers have been widely utilized in all walks of life due to their outstanding physical properties, such as high toughness, low density, and corrosion resistance
The aligned carbon nanotube-polyethylene composites (ACPCs) structure is based on a single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) array system, and PE chains are aligned with SWCNTs, which will avoid both disordered and interfacial phonon scatterings existed in amorphous PE composites
We propose a new composite model as aligned carbon nanotube-polyethylene composites, namely ACPCs
Summary
Polymers have been widely utilized in all walks of life due to their outstanding physical properties, such as high toughness, low density, and corrosion resistance. Chen’s group predicted that the thermal conductivity of a suspended polyethylene chain (SPEC), κ SPEC, achieved as high as 350 Wm−1 K−1 at room temperature by molecular dynamics (MD) simulation[4,5]. They measured the thermal conductivity of ultra-drawn polyethylene (PE) nanofibers, κ PE, as 104 Wm−1 K−1 using the cantilever method[6]. It is quite difficult to take advantage of a single polymer chain in bulk structures Another way to enhance thermal property of polymer structure is to produce polymer/carbon nanotube composites. Our study may inspire productions and measurements of aligned carbon nanotube and polymer-based composites
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