ABSTRACT The low thermal conductivity (TC) of epoxy resin limits its application in thermal management. Introducing liquid crystal units into the polymer can improve the TC. The significant restriction of molecular chain mobility, in the cross‐linked system, combined with the weak π‐π interactions between liquid crystal units and the large interlayer spacing of molecular chains, leads to severe phonon scattering, making it difficult to achieve a substantial increase in TC (through‐plane TC220 °C), excellent thermal stability (T 5% = 342.7 °C), and good water degradability. Molecular dynamics simulations confirmed that naphthalene ring embedding reduces both interlayer spacing and phonon scattering. This work presents a novel strategy for developing epoxy resins with intrinsically high TC and degradability.
Ning et al. (Tue,) studied this question.