Latex technology as a simple route to improve the thermal conductivity of a carbon nanotube/polymer composite

A novel route was revealed to reduce the interfacial phonon scattering that was considered as the bottleneck for carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to highly improve the thermal conductivity of CNT/polymer composites. Semicrystalline polyurethane (PU) dispersions were used as latex host to accommodate multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) following the colloidal physics method. The thermal conductivity increased from 0.15 W m^-1 K^-1 to 0.47 W m^-1 K^-1, by ∼210%, as the addition of the MWCNTs increases to 3 wt%. The morphology of the composites that was characterized by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and differential scanning calorimeter suggested that the continuous nanotube-rich phase existing in the interstitial space among the latex particles and the crystallites nucleated at the nanotube-polymer interface were the main factors for the effective reduction of interfacial phonon scattering.