Effects of polymer topology and morphology on thermal transport: A molecular dynamics study of bottlebrush polymers

The effects of polymer topology and morphology on thermal transport are of great importance to both fundamental understanding and practical applications. Bottlebrush (BB) polymers are unique polymers that feature a highly extended backbone conformation stabilized by densely packed side-chain polymers, which offer a rich platform to study those effects. In this paper, we report the thermal transport properties of BB polymers using equilibrium molecular dynamics. We find that sidechains dominate heat conduction in aligned BB chains and lead to lower k than aligned linear polymers due to strong localization, while backbones form an effective heat conduction network in amorphous BB polymers and lead to higher k than their linear polymer counterparts. The effect of morphology on k is also discussed.