  Polymers are widely used in industry and in our daily life because of their
diverse functionality, light weight, low cost and excellent chemical stability.
However, on some applications such as heat exchangers and electronic packaging,
the low thermal conductivity of polymers is one of the major technological
barriers. Enhancing the thermal conductivity of polymers is important for these
applications and has become a very active research topic over the past two
decades. In this review article, we aim to: 1). systematically summarize the
molecular level understanding on the thermal transport mechanisms in polymers
in terms of polymer morphology, chain structure and inter-chain coupling; 2).
highlight the rationales in the recent efforts in enhancing the thermal
conductivity of nanostructured polymers and polymer nanocomposites. Finally, we
outline the main advances, challenges and outlooks for highly
thermal-conductive polymer and polymer nanocomposites.

Materials Science