Thermal Conductivity of Polyisoprene and Polybutadiene from Molecular Dynamics Simulations and Transient Measurements

The thermal conductivities of untreated polyisoprene and polybutadiene were calculated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using a Green-Kubo approach between −10 °C and 50 °C at atmospheric pressure. For comparison, the thermal conductivities of untreated polyisoprene with a molecular weight of 54,000 g/mol and untreated polybutadiene with a molecular weight of 45,000 g/mol were measured by the transient hot wire method in similar conditions. The simulation results of both polymers are in good agreement with the experimental data. We observed that the MD simulations slightly overestimate the thermal conductivity due to the chosen force field description. Details are discussed in the paper.