Thermal and electrical properties of magnetite filled polymers

By the addition of metal-oxide particles to plastics the electrical and thermal conductivity of polymers can be increased significantly. Such particle filled polymers can substitute metals and metal oxides in applications like radio frequency interference shielding. Furthermore, particle filled polymers with higher thermal conductivity than unfilled ones become more and more important in applications with decreasing geometric dimensions and increasing output of power, like in computer chips. Therefore, thermal and electrical properties of polypropylene and polyamide with metal-oxide particle filler (magnetite, Fe3O4) are investigated. Different particle sizes of magnetite and types of additives were added in various proportions to a standard polypropylene and polyamide in an extrusion process. Samples were prepared by injection molding to investigate thermal and electrical properties systematically. The thermal conductivity increases from 0.22 to 0.93 W/(m K) for a filler content of 44 vol% of magnetite, whereas the electrical resistivity decreases more than seven orders of magnitude from an insulator (0% of magnetite) to 10 kOmega m (47 vol% of magnetite). The experimental results of thermal and electrical conductivity were correlated to the amount and particle sizes of magnetite filler. Electrical resistivity shows a significant drop at the theoretical percolation threshold (similar to0.33) and for filler contents exceeding 33 vol% the magnetite particles have point contacts and are surrounded by the polymer matrix. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.