Insulating Polymer Nanocomposites for High Thermal Conduction and Fire Retarding Applications

Technical paper presented at the 2017 Defence and Security Doctoral Symposium.

The possibility of combining the flexibility and light-weight of polymers with the highest insulation and dielectric permittivity of ceramics, drives the field of nanocomposites for potential commercial application. The inclusion of nano-sized insulating particles in the polymer matrix, and orienting the fillers along the direction of heat flow results in modifying the induced interfaces for effective phonon propagation. Such flexible polymer nanocomposites (PNC) offer easy workability and refined insulating effect with high thermal conductivity and fire-retardancy. Hence, opening a wider arena of applications with the advantage of their light-weight. With selective combination of the inclusions, other properties like anti-corrosion, UV-protection, etc. can be effortlessly induced. The engineering of the interfaces, is the key for dictating the desired properties at the macro-scale. Consequently, silane functionalisation of nanoparticles with designed dispersion technique was tried for achieving this purpose. This paper reports that surface modification of the nanoparticles can effectively solve the dispersion problem and reduces the electric field charge concentration at the interface. Presenting an effective way of resulting in a promising PNC suitable for various defence applications of radome technology, energy storage (like batteries), structural bodies and cables in general, etc.