Rulei Guo
State Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China; Nano Interface Center of Energy (NICE), School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China
Xiandong Chen
Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, P. R. China; Nano Interface Center for Energy(NICE), School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University
of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, P. R. China
Ni Tang
School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China; Innovation Institute, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China
Chao Chen
School of Chemistry and Chemical engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China
Shichen Deng
State Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China; Nano Interface Center of Energy (NICE), School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China
Xiaobo Li
Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, P. R. China; Nano Interface Center for Energy(NICE), School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University
of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, P. R. China
Jianfeng Zang
School of Optical and Electronic Information, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, P. R. China; Innovation Institute, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and
Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, P. R. China
Zhigang Xue
School of Chemistry and Chemical engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, People's Republic of China
Nuo Yang
Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, P. R. China; Nano Interface Center for Energy(NICE), School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University
of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan 430074, P. R. China; School of Material and Energy, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, China
Flexible substrates that host electronic components are essential parts of soft electronics. The continuing miniaturization of these electronics requires the substrates with high thermal conductivity to avoid function failure and lifetime reduction. However, soft and mechanically deformable systems have typically low thermal conductivity. Here, we fabricate a flexible polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nano-fiber film (PVANFF) by the electrospinning technique, which exhibits excellent flexibility and high thermal conductivity simultaneously. The effective thermal conductivity of the PVANFF along the fiber axis is 0.41 W/m-K (32% more than the value of bulk PVA). This excellent performance is attributed to polymer molecular chain alignment and fibrous structural improvements, which are resulted from the high strain rates during the electrospinning process. Furthermore, we enhance the thermal conductivity of the PVANFF by doping it with silver nanowires (AgNWs) whose effective thermal conductivity along the fiber can reach 0.49 W/m-K (58% more than the value of bulk PVA). And we also measure the PVANFF (doped with/without AgNWs) without the air between the fibers by filling it with amorphous PVA. And the thermal conductivity along the fiber of PVANFF doped with AgNWs is 0.44 W/m-K (42% more than the value of PVA). Our study provides design guidance for flexible substrates.