Form-Stable Erythritol/HDPE Composite Phase Change Material with Flexibility, Tailorability, and High Transition Enthalpy

Erythritol has attracted much attention recently in the field of phase change materials (PCMs) for thermal management because of its superior phase-transition properties. However, the liquid-phase leakage and solid-phase rigidity commonly existing in organic PCMs greatly limit its practical application. Herein, we have constructed a form-stable erythritol/high-density polyethylene (HDPE) composite PCM for the first time, in which erythritol serves as a PCM unit and HDPE as a supporting material. The most impressive aspect of this composite PCM is that the supporting material HDPE can also contribute extra transition enthalpy because of its overlapped melting temperature region with that of erythritol, and consequently, the constructed composite PCM exhibits a superior high melting enthalpy of 308.52 J/g. The erythritol/HDPE composite PCM reported in this work may provide a strategy of synthesizing from-stable PCMs with large thermal energy storage density. Moreover, we have further fabricated bulk erythritol/HDPE into a lamellar composite PCM with advanced flexibility and tailorability using a hot-pressing method. This lamellar shape-stable composite PCM is very promising to be utilized in the field of thermal management with a complicated application scenario or special configuration requirements.