Design and Preparation of a Unique Segregated Double Network with Excellent Thermal Conductive Property.
It is still a challenge to fabricate polymer-based composites with excellent thermal conductive property because of the well-known difficulties such as insufficient conductive pathways and inefficient filler-filler contact. To address this issue, a synergistic segregated double network by using two fillers with different dimensions has been designed and prepared by taking graphene nanoplates (GNPs) and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) in polystyrene for example. In this structure, GNPs form the segregated network to largely increase the filler-filler contact areas while MWCNT are embedded within the network to improve the network-density. The segregated network and the randomly dispersed hybrid network by using GNPs and MWCNT together were also prepared for comparison. It was found that the thermal conductivity of segregated double network can achieve almost 1.8-fold as high as that of the randomly dispersed hybrid network, and 2.2-fold as that of the segregated network. Meanwhile, much higher synergistic efficiency (f) of 2 can be obtained, even greater than that of other synergistic systems reported previously. The excellent thermal conductive property and higher f are ascribed to the unique effect of segregated double network: (1) extensive GNPs-GNPs contact areas via overlapped interconnections within segregated GNPs network; (2) efficient synergistic effect between MWCNT network and GNPs network based on bridge effect as well as increasing the network-density.
College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University , Chengdu 610065, China.
Kai
K
Wu
College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University , Chengdu 610065, China.
Chuxin
C
Lei
College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University , Chengdu 610065, China.
Rui
R
Huang
College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University , Chengdu 610065, China.
Weixing
W
Yang
Guangdong Shengyi Technology Limited Corporation, Dongguan 523039, China.
Songgang
S
Chai
Institute of Chemical Materials, China Academy of Engineering Physics , Mianyang 621900, China.
Chengzhen
C
Geng
College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University , Chengdu 610065, China.
Feng
F
Chen
College of Polymer Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Sichuan University , Chengdu 610065, China.
Qiang
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2346-1171
Q
Fu
graphene nanoplates; multiwalled carbon nanotubes; segregated double network; synergy; thermal conductivity