1 research outputs found
Thermally Conductive 3D-Printed Carbon-Nanotube-Filled Polymer Nanocomposites for Scalable Thermal Management
Thermal transportation in a preferred
direction is desirable and
important for addressing thermal management issues. With the merits
of high thermal conductivity, good chemical stability, and desirable
mechanical properties, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have a great potential
for wide applications in heat dissipation devices. The combination
of 3D printing and CNTs can enable unlimited possibilities for hierarchically
aligned structural programming. We report the formation of through-plane
aligned multiwalled CNT (MWCNT)-filled polylactic acid (PLA) nanocomposites
by 3D printing. The as-printed vertically (or through-plane) aligned
structure demonstrates a through-plane thermal conductivity (k⊥) of ∼0.575 W/(mK) at 20 wt %
MWCNT content, which is around 2.64 times that of a horizontally aligned
structure (∼0.218 W/(mK)) and around 5.87 times that of neat
PLA (∼0.098 W/(mK)) at 35 °C. Infrared thermal imaging
performed on 3D-printed MWCNT/PLA heat sink verified the superior
performance of the nanocomposite compared to that of the matrix polymer.
In this study, we achieved the manufacturing of MWCNT/PLA with a high
filler loading and a significant improvement in thermal conductivity
simultaneously. This work paves the way to develop 3D-printed carbon
filler-reinforced polymer composites for thermal-related applications
such as heat sinks or thermal radiators