High thermal conductivity in electrostatically engineered amorphous polymers

High thermal conductivity in amorphous polymer films via ionization-induced chain extension and stiffening, and dense packing. High thermal conductivity is critical for many applications of polymers (for example, packaging of light-emitting diodes), in which heat must be dissipated efficiently to maintain the functionality and reliability of a system. Whereas uniaxially extended chain morphology has been shown to significantly enhance thermal conductivity in individual polymer chains and fibers, bulk polymers with coiled and entangled chains have low thermal conductivities (0.1 to 0.4 W m−1 K−1). We demonstrate that systematic ionization of a weak anionic polyelectrolyte, polyacrylic acid (PAA), resulting in extended and stiffened polymer chains with superior packing, can significantly enhance its thermal conductivity. Cross-plane thermal conductivity in spin-cast amorphous films steadily grows with PAA degree of ionization, reaching up to ~1.2 W m−1 K−1, which is on par with that of glass and about six times higher than that of most amorphous polymers, suggesting a new unexplored molecular engineering strategy to achieve high thermal conductivities in amorphous bulk polymers.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Science Advances

• Publication date

  2017-07-01

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Materials Science, Physics, Engineering

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1126/sciadv.1700342PMID 28782022PMCID 5533546
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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