The curing kinetics and properties of self-healing and thermally conductive polymeric composites based on ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer filled with nano alumina

Abstract

We have investigated a self-healing thermally conductive Ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) hot melt adhesive (NAEDS, which denotes the addition of nano-alumina and disulfide bonded EVA hot melt adhesives) that can be used to effectively solve adhesive layer separation problem in photovoltaic (PV) modules and the difficulty of recycling. More specifically, we used diallyl disulfide as a cross-linking agent for EVA and alumina nanofillers as a reinforcing phase. The nano alumina filler gave the EVA better thermal conductivity. We used FTIR, SEM, and DSC to characterize and analyze NAEDS properties. The disulfide bonds in NAEDS underwent a rearrangement reaction under ultraviolet light, resulting in the self-healing of the resin (self-healing efficiency of 78.8%). The added nano alumina not only reduced the resin curing activation energy, improving its curing performance but also enhanced its thermal conductivity, achieving a 2.61 W/(m*k) thermal conductivity coefficient. The overall NAEDS performance is improved.