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.