Thermal conductivity prediction of mesoporous composites (Cu/MCM-41)

¹ School of Electric Power Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, P.R. China
² School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, P.R. China
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, P.R. China

^a e-mail: yhfeng@me.ustb.edu.cn

Received: 3 March 2014
Revised: 11 April 2014
Accepted: 14 April 2014
Published online: 10 June 2014

Abstract

The thermal conductivity of the mesoporous composites Cu/MCM-41 was studied to provide some useful data for promising applications. Both of the lattice and electronic thermal conductivities of Cu nanowires with different size were predicted. With the shell of the matrix MCM-41 and the air confined in the mesochannels considered, the effective thermal conductivity (EffTC) of composites Cu/MCM-41 was obtained. The EffTC shows a great anisotropy. The EffTC along the Z direction (axial of the mesochannel) is much lower than that along directions perpendicular to the axial. It is unnecessary to further raise the filling ratio of Cu nanowires for improving the EffTC along the directions perpendicular to the axial, since the filling ratio 20% is high enough. As long as there is a void space in the mesochannel, the EffTC along the Z direction will be as low as the thermal conductivity of the matrix MCM-41, due to the large thermal resistance of the void space in mesochannels.