I've worked with plastics that were both thermally and electrically conductive before but my current need is for a thermally conductive/electrically insulative polymer. I've found compounds I can use. One company has a material that appears to have great properties. Thing is, they want 150 USD/lb for quantities under 100 pounds. I almost fell out of my chair when I heard the price. A couple of coworkers asked if it came packaged in small plastic bags.
What's in this stuff?
I've worked with diamond filled epoxies that were in that price range, but you would never find anyone who would produce them in hundred pound quantities. I was getting 3cc syringes.
If you can use an epoxy based material, I would recommend talking to Dr. Brenner at MasterBond.
Hope this helped.
Diamond filled epoxies ... rotoblator?
Thanks for the suggestion. We're really looking for a thermoplastic. I've talked with RTV (they had the high price - it was a filled polycarbonate) and I've been trying to get the people at Cool Polymers to return my call but they aren't particularly responsive. A resin broker (Entec Polymers in Florida) is going to suggest some alternatives for me also.
Mainly, I'm curious what they are putting in a polymer that would make it thermally conductive *and* electrically insulative. Conductive/conductive is easy enough to figure out (and the info is readily available) but conductive/insulative fillers?
I've made a couple wild guesses but that's about it. My interest is curiousity based only. We only need a few hundred pounds of the plastic and we certainly aren't going to try to compound it ourselves.
Bob
A number of years ago I did some work with polypropylene by filling it with boron nitride. This was intended for rechargable battery casings to allow heat disipation during the charging cycle.
It wasn't a commercial success at the time because the amount of BN needed was so high that it was cost prohibitive based on the volume fraction required to get a large enough jump in thermal conductivity.
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