Improved thermal conductivity of polyurethane (PU)-/SiC composite fabricated via solution casting method and its mechanical model for prediction and comparison

Abstract

Polymer composites having high thermal conductivity (TC) gained great interest, including the advancement of electronic devices to become more functionalized, scaled, and integrated. In view of these, herein, highly thermal conductive polyurethane (PU)-/SiC composites are fabricated via the solution casting method. Silicon carbide is used as the filler in both flexible and rigid-polyurethane matrices to enhance the value of TC for electronic applications. A novel model has also been developed based on the Coran-Patel model for analysis and comparison of TC of as-synthesized composites. Calculated thermal conductivities by the model are found to be consistent with the experimental results. The highest measured TC for flexible as well as rigid-PU composites is 0.521 and 0.542 Wm−1K−1 representing improvements of 106% and 87% over their pure equivalents, respectively. SEM and DSC techniques are employed to analyze the samples' morphology, and other thermal properties, respectively.

Keywords

• Polyurethane
• Polymer matrix composites
• Mechanical modelling
• Silicon carbide
• Thermal conductivity
• Differential scanning calorimetry