Thermal Conductivity of Electrospun PEO/PEDOT:PSS Nanofiber Produced by Near-Field Electrospinning Method

Polymers present excellent properties such as lightweight, low cost, flexibility, and chemical stability. However, their application in the thermal domain is still limited due to the low thermal conductivity. Engineering the internal structure of polymers such as crystallinity and molecular chain alignment can result in significantly increased thermal conductivity. The electrospinning process is a popular and inexpensive method to fabricate polymer nanofibers. Among the techniques to study thermal transport of materials, a suspended micro-island device is a well-known technique to study thermal conductivity at low dimensional materials such as nanowires, nanofibers, and 2D sheets. Herein, we use the suspended micro-islands device to measure the thermal conductivity of PEO/PEDOT:PSS nanofiber produced by the near-field electrospinning method. This near-field electrospinning method can be used to accurately pattern the nanofiber to the suspended micro-island device. We will further discuss the relationship between thermal conductivity and nanofiber internal structure as well as electrospinning parameters.