Preparation of flexible composite phase change material with high thermal conductivity for battery thermal management

Battery thermal management systems (BTMSs) based on phase change material (PCM) have attracted numerous interests due to its passive cooling property and temperature uniformity capabilities. However, the poor leakage resistance and low thermal conductivity of PCMs limit their practical applications. In this work, a novel composite PCM (CPCM) simultaneously possesses high thermal conductivity, anti-leakage property and flexibility is prepared by using styrene-butylene-styrene (SBS) thermoplastic elastomer as the polymer framework and onedimensional carbon fiber (CF) as the thermal conductive filler. Benefiting from the continuous thermal conductive network formed by CF, the thermal conductivity of the CPCM increases greatly from 0.23 to 4.82 W/ (m & sdot;K). In addition, the polymer skeleton of SBS provides intensive capillary condensation to adsorb liquid-state PCM, endowing the CPCM with outstanding anti-leakage performance and flexibility. The mass retention rate of the CPCM can be maintained at 99.4 wt% under an ambient temperature of 70 degrees C for 40 h. As a result, the obtained CPCM presents outstanding temperature control performance for BTMS application. For example, under a high ambient temperature of 40 degrees C, the obtained CPCM could control the maximum temperature and temperature difference of the battery module below 49.23 and 4.76 degrees C at the highest charging-discharging rate of 3C, respectively.