How Can We Enhance The Heat Resistance of Plastic Soft Tubes?

To enhance the heat resistance of plastic soft tubes, several strategies can be employed:

1. **Use of Additives and Fillers**: Incorporating additives and fillers into plastics is a common strategy to modify their properties. For instance, mineral fillers such as calcium carbonate, silica, and carbon can be added to polymers to improve molding and forming capabilities, while enhancing heat deflection and reducing thermal expansion.

2. **Polymer Stabilizers**: These chemical additives are crucial for extending the lifespan of plastics by inhibiting or slowing down degradation caused by oxidation, UV exposure, and heat. Antioxidants, UV absorbers, quenchers, acid acceptors, metal deactivators, and heat stabilizers are examples of polymer stabilizers that help maintain the structural integrity of plastics under various environmental conditions.

3. **Flame Retardants**: As a subset of stabilizers, flame retardants play a significant role in improving fire resistance. They delay ignition and combustion, reduce smoke, and restrict flame spread. Common types include aluminum hydroxide, phosphorus compounds, and brominated compounds. These additives are essential for safety and minimizing property loss in applications.

4. **Inorganic-Organic Hybrid Fillers**: Studies have shown that inorganic-organic hybrid fillers, such as Janus fillers composed of thermally conductive silver nanoparticles and organic polystyrene brushes, can significantly enhance the thermal conductivity of polymer composites. These fillers not only enhance thermal dispersion but also help build effective thermal pathways within the composites, leading to higher thermal conductivity at relatively low filler loadings.

5. **Optimized Structural Design**: By optimizing the comprehensive performance of ultrathin flexible heat pipes (UFHPs) through laser ablation and embossing processes, the heat resistance of plastic soft tubes can be improved. Laser ablation removes the oxidized nylon layer to reduce its thermal resistance, while the embossing process creates a wavy structure on the shell to enhance flexibility. Experimental results indicate that removing the oxidized nylon layer can increase the thermal conductivity of UFHPs by 44.2-67.2%, and the maximum thermal conductivity of UFHPs with a thickness of 0.63mm under forced water cooling conditions reaches 2423.7 W/m·K.

6. **Increase Crystallinity**: For biodegradable materials such as poly(lactic acid) (PLA), increasing crystallinity can enhance heat resistance. The addition of nucleating agents is an effective way to improve the crystallinity of PLA materials, regulating the number, size, and crystallinity of PLA material spherulites through nucleating effects, thereby enhancing heat resistance.

By choosing the right combination of strategies, manufacturers can tailor the thermal and other properties of heat-resistant plastics to meet specific application requirements. These enhancement measures open up new possibilities for the use of plastics in areas where they were previously limited due to heat sensitivity.