Thermal conductivity of carbon nanotubes and their polymer nanocomposites: A review

By Zhidong Han, A. Fina. 2011

2,486 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Thermally conductive polymer composites offer new possibilities for replacing metal parts in several applications, including power electronics, electric motors and generators, heat exchangers, etc., thanks to the polymer advantages such as light weight, corrosion resistance and ease of processing. Current interest to improve the thermal conductivity of polymers is focused on the selective addition of nanofillers with high thermal conductivity. Unusually high thermal conductivity makes carbon nanotube (CNT) the best promising candidate material for thermally conductive composites. However, the thermal conductivities of polymer/CNT nanocomposites are relatively low compared with expectations from the intrinsic thermal conductivity of CNTs. The challenge primarily comes from the large interfacial thermal resistance between the CNT and the surrounding polymer matrix, which hinders the transfer of phonon dominating heat conduction in polymer and CNT. This article reviews the status of worldwide research in the thermal conductivity of CNTs and their polymer nanocomposites. The dependence of thermal conductivity of nanotubes on the atomic structure, the tube size, the morphology, the defect and the purification is reviewed. The roles of particle/polymer and particle/particle interfaces on the thermal conductivity of polymer/CNT nanocomposites are discussed in detail, as well as the relationship between the thermal conductivity and the micro- and nano-structure of the composites.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1e0cb959ef4385ddaaa174d816ce426360400c9d

How researchers see this paper

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In Biomedical Engineering

1. R. Moghadam
2. R. Warzoha
3. Chul B. Park
4. P. Pötschke
5. Shixue Dou
6. R. Weigand
7. Amy S. Fleischer
8. Ronggui Yang

In Materials Chemistry

1. R. Moghadam
2. Chul B. Park
3. R. Warzoha
4. Dan Zhao
5. Chao Han
6. P. Pötschke
7. Dawid Janas
8. Johan Liu

Citations in the corpus

• Novel nanostructured thermal interface materials: a review (2018, background): “[35] have made thorough reviews on this topic in 2011.”
• Heat transfer in microcellular polystyrene/multi-walled carbon nanotube nanocomposite foams (2015, background): “novel materials [18,19].”