The low thermal conductivity of amorphous polymers typically prevents their usage in thermal management applications. Therefore, increasing their intrinsic thermal conductivity poses an exciting scientific challenge. One approach is to promote attractive interchain interactions. Here, we investigate the thermal conductivity of several ampholytic polymers. This unique class of polymers offers H bond donor and acceptor groups in each repeat unit and constitutes a one-component system. We use IR spectroscopy to characterize the bonding strength and motifs based on the carbonyl peak. For the dry ampholytic polymers, we find a correlation between H bond strength and thermal conductivity. We also characterized the influence of hydration under various relative humidity conditions, which mostly led to an increase in thermal conductivity. This increase can be rationalized by the formation of a water–polymer nanocomposite material and can be described by volume-weighted mixing models.

中文翻译：

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两性聚合物中的热传递：氢键和吸水的作用

非晶态聚合物的低导热率通常会阻止其在热管理应用中使用。因此，增加其固有的热导率构成了令人兴奋的科学挑战。一种方法是促进有吸引力的链间交互。在这里，我们研究了几种两性聚合物的热导率。这类独特的聚合物在每个重复单元中提供H键供体和受体基团，构成一个单组分系统。我们使用红外光谱来表征键合强度和基于羰基峰的图案。对于干燥的两性聚合物，我们发现氢键强度与热导率之间存在相关性。我们还表征了在各种相对湿度条件下水合的影响，这主要导致导热系数的增加。