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Thermal Resistance Of Surface Modified, Dispersion Controlled CNT Foams

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2016, Master of Science, University of Akron, Polymer Science.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are considered to be one of the most promising materials to be used in thermally conductive polymer composites, since CNTs couple extremely high thermal conductivity with high aspect ratios, thus enduing CNTs with the ability to form percolated networks at very low loadings. [1] The addition of a small amount of CNTs is expected to increase thermal conductivity dramatically, however, thermal conductivity measurements of CNT-polymer nanocomposites present unclear results. This is primarily attributed to: (1) CNTs are easy to aggregate into bundles when blended with polymers due to the strong Van der Waals interactions, causing poor dispersion in the matrix. [1] (2) CNT-polymer interfacial resistance that comes from the large interfacial resistance between CNT and polymer matrix, hindering the phonon conducting heat in polymers and CNTs, [1] which is found to be the dominant reason. [2] While it is very important to study CNT-polymer interfacial resistance in order to produce CNT-polymer composites with higher thermal conductivity, controlling the dispersion of CNTs is extremely challenging. In this work, 3-D CNT foams have been synthesized and used as the templates to fabricate CNT- polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) composites, because in foams the dispersion of CNTs is perfectly controlled. CNT foams have been modified using water plasma modification and metal coating in the hope of forming hydrogen bonding and metal complexation between CNTs and PVA matrix.
Ali Dhinojwala (Advisor)
Yu Zhu (Committee Member)
62 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wang, X. (2016). Thermal Resistance Of Surface Modified, Dispersion Controlled CNT Foams [Master's thesis, University of Akron]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1460425184

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wang, Xue. Thermal Resistance Of Surface Modified, Dispersion Controlled CNT Foams. 2016. University of Akron, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1460425184.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wang, Xue. "Thermal Resistance Of Surface Modified, Dispersion Controlled CNT Foams." Master's thesis, University of Akron, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1460425184

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)