PolyMetal Workshop: "Thermally conductive Materials & Testing of Thermal Conductivity" Review

PolyMetal Workshop „Thermally conductive Materials & Testing of Thermal Conductivity“

On 10 February 2021, another online workshop on "Thermally conductive materials & Testing of Thermal Conductivity" took place as part of the project PolyMetal. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the event was again organised as an online workshop by MUL via Microsoft teams in coordination with the project partners, as was the workshop on "Thermally Conductive Materials" in June 2020.

The online workshop dealt with the question of which materials with very high thermal conductivity are already available on the market, in which application areas they can be used and which new developments are being targeted. As a further focus were discussed the exact determination of the thermal conductivity using the hot disc method, which challenges exist in the measurement and how these influences can be kept low.

DI R. Reumüller /MUL chaired the workshop, after the welcome and a short introductory presentation of the project PolyMetal.

Due to technical reasons, the workshop started with the presentation of Dr. Stefanie Wildhack / 3M Advanced Materials Division : " Tailoring the thermal conductivity of plastic materials with boron nitride", followed by Dr. Peter Plenk /C3 Prozess- und Analysentechnik GmbH with "Determination of thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity using the Hot Disk - method". The third speaker was DI Marco Grundler / The hydrogen and fuel cell center ZBT GmbH with " Thermally conductive compounds based on graphite for heat-sink, fuel cell and battery applications". After the respective presentations, the participants took the opportunity to clarify their open questions with the experts and to discuss this interesting topic together afterwards.

After the detailed discussion, R. Reumüller introduced the PolyMetal project and its goals to the participants with a short presentation. Using the questionnaire (https://de.surveymonkey.com/r/HN3S2FB) created within the project, she explained how the interests and needs of companies and R&D institutions can be taken into account in future activities by filling it in. Furthermore, it showed on the PolyMetal homepage how interested companies and R&D institutions can access reports, results and information about the project activities by visiting the project homepage under /activities/. Of course, the PolyMetal LinkedIn group coordinated by Maja Mesl  (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13740430/ ) was pointed out and the participants were invited to become members of this group to be informed about the latest activities, such as the „PolyMetal Final Conference“ in Leoben in autumn. R. Reumüller concluded by thanking the almost 70 participants for their keen interest. The handouts of the presentations were sent to the participants via a download link and will also be sent to other interested parties upon request by R. Reumüller (renate.reumueller@unileoben.ac.at) or M. Mešl (maja.mesl@ftpo.eu).