High Thermal and Electrical Conductivity of Template Fabricated P3HT/MWCNT Composite Nanofibers

Nanoporous alumina membranes are filled with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and then poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) melt, resulting in nanofibers with nanoconfinement induced coalignment of both MWCNT and polymer chains. The simple sonication process proposed here can achieve vertically aligned arrays of P3HT/MWCNT composite nanofibers with 3 wt % to 55 wt % MWCNT content, measured using thermogravimetric methods. Electrical and thermal transport in the composite nanofibers improves drastically with increasing carbon nanotube content where nanofiber thermal conductivity peaks at 4.7 ± 1.1 Wm(-1)K(-1) for 24 wt % MWCNT and electrical percolation occurs once 20 wt % MWCNT content is surpassed. This is the first report of the thermal conductivity of template fabricated composite nanofibers and the first proposed processing technique to enable template fabrication of composite nanofibers with high filler content and long aspect ratio fillers, where enhanced properties can also be realized on the macroscale due to vertical alignment of the nanofibers. These materials are interesting for thermal management applications due to their high thermal conductivity and temperature stability.