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TECHFIND - MATERIALS
Heat Conducting Polyethylene
While most polymers tend to be electrical and thermal insulators, researchers at a Massachusetts university have transformed a widely used polymer, polyethylene, into a good thermal conductor on par with many metals, while retaining its properties as an electrical insulator. Unlike metals, this transformed polyethylene has directional thermal conductivity, making it especially useful in applications in which it is desirable to draw heat away from a component, like in computer processor chips. The transformation process involved slowly drawing a polyethylene fiber out of a solution, using the finely controllable cantilever of an atomic force microscope in order to get all the polymer molecules to line up the same way, rather than forming a chaotic tangled mass, as they normally do. The result is a relatively inexpensive, light weight, chemically stable and efficient directional thermal conductor for use in heat-exchanger fins (like the coils on the back of a refrigerator or in an air conditioner), cell-phone casings or the plastic packaging for computer chips.
Media Spiders®
While most polymers tend to be electrical and thermal insulators, researchers at a Massachusetts university have transformed a widely used polymer, polyethylene, into a good thermal conductor on par with many metals, while retaining its properties as an electrical insulator. Unlike metals, this transformed polyethylene has directional thermal conductivity, making it especially useful in applications in which it is desirable to draw heat away from a component, like in computer processor chips. The transformation process involved slowly drawing a polyethylene fiber out of a solution, using the finely controllable cantilever of an atomic force microscope in order to get all the polymer molecules to line up the same way, rather than forming a chaotic tangled mass, as they normally do. The result is a relatively inexpensive, light weight, chemically stable and efficient directional thermal conductor for use in heat-exchanger fins (like the coils on the back of a refrigerator or in an air conditioner), cell-phone casings or the plastic packaging for computer chips.
