Flexible solid-solid phase change materials with high stability for thermal management

Phase change materials are considered as a promising technology to solve problems such battery thermal management. However, during the process of charging and discharge, the migration of microscopic com-ponents in PCM and the brittle fracture caused by high rigidity of PCM will hinder the application of PCM in the thermal management field. In this paper, a polyurethane (PU) phase change material was prepared, and by weighing the relationship between thermal storage capacity and mechanical properties of PCM, PU40 0 0 was considered to be the best choice with latent heat and strain of 98.8 J/g and 10%. In addition, the interfacial interaction of carbon nanotubes (CNT) and hydroxylated carbon nanotubes (CNT-OH) with the PU was analyzed at the microscopic scale, and the results showed that CNT-OH has stronger inter-facial binding energy with the phase change matrix. Therefore, CNT-OH was used to improve the heat transfer performance of PU40 0 0. The thermal conductivity of the composites reached 1.3 W/(m center dot K) at 5% CNT-OH content. At 2C discharge rate, the phase change material keeps the maximum temperature and maximum temperature difference of the battery module within 50 and 2 degrees C.(c) 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.