Effect of graphene nanoplatelets relative size and polyethylene chain length on the enhancement of thermal conductivity of their composite

作者：Zhang, Ji^*; Ragab, Tarek^*; Wang, Mengjie; Wang, Weidong^*; Zhu, Yingmin; Zhang, Haiyan; Wang, Xiao; Jiang, Kyle

来源：INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THERMAL SCIENCES, 2024, 195: 108617.

DOI：10.1016/j.ijthermalsci.2023.108617

• Molecular dynamics simulation
• Polyethylene
• Graphene nanoplatelets
• Thermal conductivity
• Polymers
• Electronic packaging

In this paper, the thermal conductivity of polyethylene (PE) incorporated with graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) has been studied using equilibrium Molecular Dynamics (eMD) simulations. A systematic MD simulation for PE -GNPs composites was performed with graphene weight percentage (wt.%) up to-40% to investigate the effect of the addition of GNPs on the thermal conductivity of PE. A significant improvement of thermal conductivity to around 80-120 W/(m center dot K) is reported at GNPs weight percentage of-40%. Moreover, the effect of chain length of PE at various wt.% of GNPs on the thermal conductivity of PE-GNPs nanocomposite versus the wt.% of GNPs are is studied using linear and second-order polynomial regression analysis. For PE matrix with 20-monomer chain length, which is comparable to the size of filling GNPs, the thermal conductivity has a linear relation when the weight percentage of GNPs is under 15%, and a quadratic polynomial relation over the whole simulated weight percentage. Thermal conductivity of PE matrix with 50 and 100-monomer exhibited two linear regions with respect to the GNPs weight percentage when the weight percentage is under 10% and above 30%. The effect of the GNPs/PE chain length relative size is well-explained using the number of connected polymer chain ends in the PE-GNPs composites. This study concludes that the relative size of the thermal conducting filling materials compared to the polymer chain lengths has distinguish effect on the thermal conductivity.

• 单位
  西安电子科技大学