Development of comformable thermally conductive polymer material systems

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Spark Innovations Inc. is currently undertaking a project that develops new wearable temperature regulating devices (i.e., a patent-pending technology), which can effectively dissipate heat from target users to the surrounding areas. It aims to stimulate the physiology of the user, inducing weight loss all day long. The devices to be developed are required to be self-regulating, maintaining the skin temperature of the user at a constant level below that of the rest of the user's body. One of their applications is to serve as a thin-layer coating onto the inner side of apparel, facilitating efficient dissipation of generated body heat. Spark is targeting to integrate such devices in smart apparels for the promotion of body fitness. By incorporating cooling channels in the apparel, the body heat will effectively be transferred through the temperature regulating coating and subsequently be removed from the body. This smart apparel is expected to attract attention from and be welcomed by customers who are eager to shape their bodies. One key technological challenge to this technology is the needs to develop a new conformable and lightweight thermally conductive material system that can conform to the contour of body shape, and thereby perfect the contact between the temperature regulating device and the skin to facilitate heat dissipation. In this context, the over-arching goal of this research project is to develop a compliant film of highly thermally conductive polymer/hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) composite foams, and subsequently integrate them into a cold temperature regulation device to perfect its contact with the user's skin. The short-term objectives are: (i) design composite formulations and processing conditions to tailor the microstructure of polymer/hBN composite foams; (ii) investigate the effects of composite foams' microstructures on their conformability and effective thermal conductivity; (iii) develop the structure-to-property relationships of polymer composite foams in terms of their compliance and effective thermal conductivity; and (iv) evaluate the heat conducting performance of the flexible, thermally conductive film on hot bodies with different surface contours.