Effect of boundary chain folding on thermal conductivity of lamellar amorphous polyethylene

Thermal transport properties of amorphous polymers depend significantly on the chain morphology, and boundary chain folding is a common phenomenon in bulk or lamellar polymer materials. In this work, by using molecular dynamics simulations, we study thermal conductivity of lamellar amorphous polyethylene (LAPE) with varying chain length (L(0)). For a short L(0) without boundary chain folding, thermal conductivity of LAPE is homogeneous along the chain length direction. In contrast, boundary chain folding takes place for large L(0), and the local thermal conductivity at the boundary is notably lower than that of the central region, indicating inhomogeneous thermal transport in LAPE. By analysing the chain morphology, we reveal that the boundary chain folding causes the reduction of both the orientation order parameter along the heat flow direction and the radius of gyration, leading to the reduced local thermal conductivity at the boundary. Further vibrational spectrum analysis reveals that the boundary chain folding shifts the vibrational spectrum to the lower frequency, and suppresses the transmission coefficient for both C–C vibration and C–H vibration. Our study suggests that the boundary chain folding is an important factor for polymers to achieve desirable thermal conductivity for plastic heat exchangers and electronic packaging applications.