High Thermal Conductive Plastic(HTCP) is highly interested materials to replace metals.
For example, they are used to replace metal housing for LED bulbs and heatsink.
The testing was performed with the corporation with UNITIKA.
We made samples with the size 30 x 30 x 1 [mm].
Since we have tools and machines, we made the molding and did the plastic injection by ourselves.
Fig.1 The series of plastic injection for HTCP.
As you can see how the plastic flows and make the shape.
Using our Thermowave Analyzer(TA), we measured the thermal diffusivity of the samples.
We made samples with 3 different grades: 5W, 20W, and 50W.
The following pictures are the results for each samples.
Fig. 2 5W sample
Fig. 3 20W sample
Fig. 4 50W sample
In these pictures, red and blue represent higher and low thermal conductivity respectively.
As you noticed, 20W sample was made uniformly.
On the other hand, 50W sample was not as uniform as 20W.
We believe this is due to the fillers UNITIKA put in these samples.
The filler changes how the plastics flow inside the molding.
One thing we should notice is that although the appearance of the HTCP samples are good, thermal property of the samples are not so uniform.
In some applications, the non-uniformity of the thermal property plays a quite big role.
