Investigating Conductive Polymer Composites Developed Using Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene/Graphene/Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes for Effective Thermal Management

This research study examines the effects of carbon-based nanofillers, graphene (GNP), and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) on the properties of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) composites in different ratios. The composite films were fabricated using a solution mixing method, and their fabrication was optimized using Taguchi's design of experiments technique. The thermal conductivity of various ABS composite films was assessed using a newly developed experimental setup designed for one-dimensional heat conduction. Each conductive film underwent SEM, TGA, and SSTM to evaluate morphology and thermal properties. SEM analysis confirmed the uniform dispersion of nanofillers within the polymer matrix. Furthermore, the thermal analysis demonstrated a significant improvement of approximately 11.14% in degradation temperature and 10.39% in decomposition temperature for composition ABS/3.5/GNP/3.5/MWCNT. The highest thermal conductivity (k) of 0.825 W/mK was achieved at 7 wt.% of GNP and MWCNT nanofillers. The composite film ABS/GNP/MWCNT with compositions of 93/3.5/3.5 wt.% exhibited a 358.33% increase in thermal conductivity compared to pure ABS material. The observations highlighted in this study have been used to develop new novel materials and thermally conductive filaments to fabricate microchannel heat exchangers for efficient thermal management applications.