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High thermal conductivity in amorphous polymer blends by engineered interchain interactions

Nature Materials volume 14, pages 295–300 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Thermal conductivity is an important property for polymers, as it often affects product reliability (for example, electronics packaging), functionality (for example, thermal interface materials) and/or manufacturing cost1. However, polymer thermal conductivities primarily fall within a relatively narrow range (0.1–0.5 W m−1 K−1) and are largely unexplored. Here, we show that a blend of two polymers with high miscibility and appropriately chosen linker structure can yield a dense and homogeneously distributed thermal network. A sharp increase in cross-plane thermal conductivity is observed under these conditions, reaching over 1.5 W m−1 K−1 in typical spin-cast polymer blend films of nanoscale thickness, which is approximately an order of magnitude larger than that of other amorphous polymers.

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Figure 1: High thermal conductivity in amorphous polymer blends by engineered interchain interactions.
Figure 2: Comparison of H-bond strengths in PAP:PAA, PAP:PVA and PAP:PVPh.
Figure 3: Thermal and structural properties of PAP:PAA.
Figure 4: Tapping-mode AFM data for PAP:PAA blends.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences, as part of the Center for Solar and Thermal Energy Conversion in Complex Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center (DE-SC0000957). This work was also partly supported by the Converging Research Center Program funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (Project No. 2014M3C1A8048791). G-H.K. also acknowledges a PISET fellowship from the University of Michigan Energy Institute. All authors acknowledge the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility and Electron Microbeam Analysis Laboratory for sample preparation and characterization.

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Author notes

  1. Gun-Ho Kim, Dongwook Lee and Apoorv Shanker: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2125, USA

    Gun-Ho Kim, Lei Shao & Kevin P. Pipe

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2136, USA

    Gun-Ho Kim, Min Sang Kwon & Jinsang Kim

  3. Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2136, USA

    Dongwook Lee, Apoorv Shanker & Jinsang Kim

  4. Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1040, USA

    David Gidley

  5. Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1055, USA

    Jinsang Kim

  6. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2136, USA

    Jinsang Kim

  7. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2121, USA

    Kevin P. Pipe

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  1. Gun-Ho Kim
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Contributions

G-H.K. conceived the initial ideas with the help of K.P.P., and measured and analysed the thermal conductivity and AFM data. J.K., D.L. and A.S. designed the polymer systems. D.L., A.S. and G-H.K. prepared the polymer blend films. D.L. and A.S. measured and analysed FTIR spectroscopy data. L.S. deposited metal patterns and measured film thicknesses. G-H.K., A.S., and M.S.K. measured and analysed DSC data. D.L. measured GIXS. D.G. measured PALS. J.K. and K.P.P. supervised the work. G-H.K. wrote the manuscript with contributions from all authors, and J.K. and K.P.P. revised the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jinsang Kim or Kevin P. Pipe.

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Kim, GH., Lee, D., Shanker, A. et al. High thermal conductivity in amorphous polymer blends by engineered interchain interactions. Nature Mater 14, 295–300 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4141

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