The low thermal conductivity of amorphous polymers typically prevents their usage in thermal management applications. Therefore, increasing their intrinsic thermal conductivity poses an exciting scientific challenge. One approach is to promote attractive interchain interactions. Here, we investigate the thermal conductivity of several ampholytic polymers. This unique class of polymers offers H-bond donor and acceptor groups in each repeat unit and constitutes an onecomponent system. We use IR spectroscopy to characterize the bonding strength and motifs based on the carbonyl peak. For the dry ampholytic polymers, we find a correlation between H-bond strength and thermal conductivity. We also characterized the influence of hydration at various relative humidity conditions, which mostly led to an increase in thermal conductivity. This increase can be rationalized by the formation of a water-polymer nanocomposite material and can be described by volume-weighted mixing models. conductivity. This is an ongoing challenge to be addressed by polymer chemists and engineers over the next years. ASSOCIATED CONTENT Supporting Informationthermal conductivity measurements, IR spectroscopy of individual polymers, DSC measurements, effective medium mixing models, and microscopy of the transducer layer

Porous adsorber membranes are promising materials for the removal of charged pollutants, such as heavy metal ions or organic dyes as model substances for pharmaceuticals from water. Here, we present the surface grafting of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) track-etched membranes having well defined cylindrical pores of 0.2 or 1 µm diameter with two polyelectrolytes, poly(2-acrylamido glycolic acid) (PAGA) and poly(N-acetyl dehydroalanine) (PNADha). The polyelectrolyte functionalised membranes were characterised by changes in wettability and hydraulic permeability in response to the external stimuli pH and the presence of Cu2+ ions. The response of the membranes proved to be consistent with functionalisation inside the pores, and the change of grafted polyelectrolyte macro-conformation was due to the reversible protonation or binding of Cu2+ ions. Moreover, the adsorption of the model dye methylene blue was studied and quantified. PAGA-grafted membranes showed an adsorption behavior following the Langmuir model for methylene blue.

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