Ultra-elastic and super-insulating biomass PEBA nanoporous foams achieved by combining in-situ fibrillation with microcellular foaming

Abstract

High-performance thermal insulation materials play a critical role in thermal management and saving energy. The current conventional thermal insulation materials cannot meet the increasing requirements of thermal management for thermal insulation performance. The advanced insulating materials represented by silica aerogels have excellent thermal insulation properties, but the brittleness limits their applications. Herein, we reported a flexible and environmentally friendly method to prepare ultra-elastic and super-insulating bio-based nanocellular material by means of microcellular foaming of in-situ fibrillated PA reinforced PEBA nanocomposites with the mixture of CO2 and N2 as blowing agents. Thanks to the significantly reduced air thermal conductivity within nanoscale cells, the nanoporous foam exhibits outstanding thermally insulating properties with a thermal conductivity of as low as 25.6 mW/m K. More importantly, the nanoporous foam also shows excellent compression and stretch resilience and outstanding flexibility. The excellent thermal insulation, ultra-elasticity, biomass and biodegradability, environmental friendliness, and manufacturing scalability make the material attractive for high-performance thermal management applications.