화학공학소재연구정보센터
Macromolecules, Vol.53, No.13, 5528-5537, 2020
Thermal Transport in Ampholytic Polymers: The Role of Hydrogen Bonding and Water Uptake
The low thermal conductivity of amorphous polymers typically prevents their usage in thermal management applications. Therefore, increasing their intrinsic thermal conductivity poses an exciting scientific challenge. One approach is to promote attractive interchain interactions. Here, we investigate the thermal conductivity of several ampholytic polymers. This unique class of polymers offers H bond donor and acceptor groups in each repeat unit and constitutes a one-component system. We use IR spectroscopy to characterize the bonding strength and motifs based on the carbonyl peak. For the dry ampholytic polymers, we find a correlation between H bond strength and thermal conductivity. We also characterized the influence of hydration under various relative humidity conditions, which mostly led to an increase in thermal conductivity. This increase can be rationalized by the formation of a water-polymer nanocomposite material and can be described by volume-weighted mixing models.