Highly thermal conductive Boron Nitride/Polyrotaxane encapsulated PEG-based phase change materials

• Published in: European polymer journal Vol. 199; p. 112431
• Main Authors: Yin, Guang-Zhong, Yang, Xiao-Mei, López, Alba Marta, Molleja, Javier García, Vázquez-López, Antonio, Wang, De-Yi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 03.11.2023
• Subjects: Boron nitride; Energy storage; Flexible composites; Phase change materials; Polyrotaxane; Phase change materials; Boron nitride; Polyrotaxane; Flexible composites; Energy storage
• ISSN: 0014-3057; 1873-1945
• DOI: 10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2023.112431

[Display omitted] •Polyrotaxane is selected as the supporter material for PEG based leakage-proof phase change materials.•The form-stable PCM performed high thermal conductivity with value of 2.72 W/(m·K).•The PCM retains excellent heat processability and flexibility.•It showed outstanding performances in thermal management of smart phone and peak shifting and valley filling effect for thermoelectric generator (TEG). In this work, we tried to overcome the typical limitations of phase change materials (PCMs), namely, leakage and low thermal conductivity. To realize the leakage proof PCM, a polyrotaxane (PLR) was selected as a support material to encapsulate Polyethylene glycol (PEG) 1 k. Subsequently, different contents of Boron Nitride (BN) were blended to enhance the thermal conductivity of PLR/PEG matrix. The PCMs created in this work achieves a high thermal performance with enthalpy values (91.2–123.5 J/g) and high flexibility and shows a great shape stability and no leakage and shape change during its phase transition. Due to the action of BN as a multifunctional filler, the PCMs also experienced an increase of 186.7% to 806.7% in thermal conductivity values, and enhanced flame retardancy (with decrease of 16.6% for pHRR and 25.5% for THR). These improvements solve the main problems of organic PCMs thus making PLR-PEG-BN based materials a good candidate to be used as thermal energy storage material in industrial applications. For the exact application cases, it showed obvious Peak Shaving and Valley Filling for thermoelectric generator and heat regulation for the smart phone.