Glass transition temperature as a guide to selection of polymers suitable for PTC materials

Abstract

Abstract It has been shown that the only way to predict the size of the PTC effect displayed by a crystalline polymer when filled with conductive particles is through the knowledge of the glass transition point of the polymer. The size of the PTC anomaly is found to decrease sharply with rise in glass transition temperature and for a polymer to be a useful PTC material its glass transition must be below 0°C. It has not been possible to explain this relationship by any of the current theories of the PTC mechanism in filled polymers.