Designing Poly(vinylidene fluoride)-Silicon Carbide Nanowire Composite Structures to Achieve High Thermal Conductivity

Orientation of high-aspect-ratio and high-thermal-conductivity materials are beneficial to achieve the high thermal conductivity in specified direction of thermal managing materials with low loading. Currently, the reported methods are generally complicated in operation and low in yield, which makes it difficult to realize industrialized produce. In this work, poly(vinylidene fluoride)-silicon carbide (PVDF-SiC) nanowires composites with horizontal aligned structure were fabricated simply and efficiently through structural design. Orientation behavior of SiC nanowires in PVDF-SiC composites with different thickness was investigated. Simultaneously, the universality of the proposed method in this kind of system is verified by modeling, which is expected to provide guidance and prediction for the design and experimental research of similar structure. Under the guidance of the model, PVDF composites with different SiC nanowires contents were prepared. At a fraction 18.99 vol %, the thermal conductivity of the composite was remarkably improved, up to 13.31 W/(m K). PVDF-SiC nanowires composites with high thermal conductivity can effectively diffuse the heat generated during the operation of chips, which has promising applications in thermal managing materials.