Optimal analysis for thermal conductivity variation of EVA/SCF composites prepared by spatial confining forced network assembly

Abstract In this paper, the influences of internal mixing, spatial confining forced network assembly (SCFNA) method, and the addition of dicumyl peroxide (DCP) crosslinker on the comprehensive properties of ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer/short carbon fiber (EVA/SCF) composite were investigated systematically. The results showed that both the increase of rotational temperature and the decrease of rotational speed during the internal mixing would do benefit to the maintenance of the SCF length and the enhancement of thermal conductivity (TC) of the EVA/SCF composite. During the SCFNA process, the distance between SCFs within the EVA/SCF composite trended to decrease with the increasing of compression degree. Thus, the thermal conductive networks would be compacted and the TC of the EVA/SCF composite can be enhanced by more than one order of magnitude while the material system kept unchanged in this process. Besides, we found the addition of DCP crosslinker would lead to a slight decrease in the melting and crystallization temperature of the EVA/SCF composite. The increase of DCP concentration would further result in the destruction of structural regularity of EVA matrix and the orientation difficulty of SCFs in the composite system.