Abstract
AbstractThe growing demand for renewable energy sources has prompted the development of dielectric materials with the ability to store and efficiently recover electrical energy. Here, we correlate the structure and thermal conductivity of uniaxially oriented disentangled ultra‐high molecular weight polyethylene (dis‐UHMWPE) composites reinforced with gold nanoparticles with their electrical properties and potential application as electrical energy storage devices. Stretching increases the orientation of the polymer chains and thus the crystallinity and reduces the aggregation of gold nanoparticles while the thermal conductivity enhances significantly along the orientation axis. The structural changes driven by stretching result in two competing effects; on the one hand, the crystallinity increase reduces the permittivity of the composites and increases the resistivity, while on the other hand the recovery efficiency of oriented materials excels that of unstretched samples by up to 6 times at 5 s. Therefore, our work shows the structure–property relationship in electrical energy storage materials.
Highlights
The structural analysis by means of Raman spectroscopy, small-angle, and wide-angle Xray scattering revealed an increase in crystallinity and orientation for increasing drawing ratios, as well as a decrease in gold nanoparticle aggregation
Uniaxial plastic deformation significantly affected the thermal conductivity in a beneficial way increasing from the reported $0.3 WmÀ1 KÀ1 of unstretched polyethylene to up to 4.6 WmÀ1 KÀ1, enabling faster cooling along the orientation axis
We studied the application of these composites as electrical energy storage devices by testing their performance during charge and discharge cycles and found that the recovery efficiency increased dramatically in oriented samples
Summary
We correlate the structure and thermal conductivity of uniaxially oriented disentangled ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (dis-UHMWPE) composites reinforced with gold nanoparticles with their electrical properties and potential application as electrical energy storage devices. Stretching increases the orientation of the polymer chains and the crystallinity and reduces the aggregation of gold nanoparticles while the thermal conductivity enhances significantly along the orientation axis.
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