Composite phase change material with room-temperature-flexibility for battery thermal management

Flexible composite phase change materials (CPCMs) can minimize the thermal contact resistance in battery thermal management. However, these “thermally-induced” flexible CPCMs only present well-flexibility above the phase change temperature, which is unfavorable to the flexible assembly of the cells and battery modules with variable specifications. Herein, a kind of flexible CPCM with well-retained flexibility in a wide temperature range is prepared by carefully selecting a copolyester thermoplastic elastomer with polyether soft segment (TPC-et) to replace the conventional olefin block copolymer (OBC) skeleton. The internal rotation resistance of the ether bond in TPC-et is much lower than that of the C–C bond in OBC, thus giving rise to a better flexibility in room and low temperatures from 20 to −5 ℃. Combining the room-temperature-flexibility with the high thermal conductivity of 1.64 W m−1 K−1, enough latent heat of 102 J g−1 and suitable phase change region of 40–50 ℃, the obtained TPC-et based flexible CPCM shows outstanding applicability and cooling performance to various cells and battery modules through facile installations. The maximum temperature of the cylindrical, prismatic and pouch battery modules with TPC-et based CPCM is 51.5, 42.1 and 50.0 ℃, respectively, 4.0, 3.9 and 5.4 ℃ lower than the modules using rigid CPCM, respectively.