High Thermal Conductive Insulating Polymers

Abstract

Polymers are superior electrical insulating material but also are thermal insulators. Most of conventional polymers are hard to transmit the heat, then polymers are generally used as composites containing ceramics powders to improve their low thermal conductivities. Recently, several journals have published the articles about the high thermal conductive polymers themselves, not composites. One is about the widely used thermoplastic polymer, polyethylene by ultra-drawn nano-fiber, which has the high thermal conductivity of 104Wm^-1K^-1 like conductive metals. The other is a thermosetting polymer used in electronics devices, especially in mesogenic epoxy resin, shows the high thermal conductivity of 5.8Wm^-1K^-1 to cross-plane direction in the interface on the substrate by controlling higher order structure. These thermal conductivities have achieved by controlling the higher order structures of polymers. In this article, the latest technologies of controlling the higher order structures of polymers to increase the thermal conductivities would be explained.