Thermal and electrical characterization of polymer/ceramic composites with polyvinyl butyral matrix

As polymers have the ability to be easily molded in to any shape, they have a wide range of applications in industry. Composites prepared by dispersing ceramics in to polymer matrix have higher thermal conductivity than the original polymer, and they still retain their high electrical resistance. In this work, polyvinyl butyral (PVB) is chosen as the polymer matrix. Ceramic nanoparticles like boron nitride (BN), zinc oxide (ZnO) and silicon carbide (SiC) are used as fillers. Polymer composites with different filler loading ratio (wt %) are prepared and their thermal and electrical properties are analyzed. FT-IR, XRD and TGA characterizations are also performed on the composites. The results indicated that PVB composite with hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) showed the best improvement in thermal conductivity up to 0.5194 W m−1.K−1 which is an increase of 131.87%, and volume resistivity of composites remained high, above the 1010 Ω-cm level.