Composite Material with Excellent Thermal Management and Self-Healing Performance for Battery Temperature Control and Human Thermal Therapy

Inorganic phase-change materials are promising materials for realizing personal thermal therapy and thermal management of electronic devices owing to their advantages of high energy storage density and stable phase-change temperature. However, the poor flexibility and irrecoverable fracturing of inorganic phase-change materials are long-standing bottlenecks in achieving efficient thermal management. This study proposed a method for preparing self-healing and flexible sodium acetate trihydrate (SAT)/expanded graphite (EG)/borax/sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) (labeled as SEBC)-based polyacrylamide (PAM)/chitosan (CS)/SEBC hydrogel composites with a self-healing ability and a certain degree of flexibility by constructing PAM/CS flexible dual-networked hydrogels for thermal management. The cross-linked dual network was formed by PAM and CS-wrapped SEBC to prepare self-healing PAM/CS/SEBC hydrogel composites. A 50 wt % content of PAM/CS enabled the composite to exhibit excellent flexibility and 87.9% self-healing efficiency. The composites that were damaged and self-healed showed thermal/conductive properties and thermal stabilities close to those of the original composites, owing to their excellent self-healing ability. Furthermore, energy devices based on flexible PAM/CS/SEBC hydrogel composites were developed to realize personal thermal therapy and efficient battery thermal management. Overall, this study provides a promising route for the fabrication of flexible and self-healing inorganic phase-change materials for thermal management.