Thermal conductivity (TC) of high density polyethylene/multiwall carbon nanotube (HDPE/MWCNT) composite films was measured by laser pulse method. It is found that the TC increased quickly with the increase of MWCNT fraction when the volume fraction of MWCNT was below 3.35%. However, as the volume fraction of MWCNT was over 3.35%, the increasing rate became slow. A new percolation model was proposed based on the effect of MWCNT network to simulate the TC of HDPE/MWCNT composite films. The simulation result was in good agreement the experimental data well. In addition, the relationship of TC with the increase of temperature was also discussed.
HDPE/MWCNT composite, thermal conductivity, percolation modelPositive temperature coefficient (PTC) polymer composites are temperature sensitive materials whose electric resistivity sharply increases with the increase of temperature in the PTC temperature range. Generally, the PTC polymer composites are synthesized by using polymer and conductive dopants, and the carbon black (CB) is the most popular dopant.Due to their unique auto-switch function, the CBfilled PTC polymer composites have been widely used in auto-control heat cable, plane heater and overrun current protecting device in the fields of petrochemistry, electric device, electric power, traffic, agriculture, stockbreeding, paper making and medical treatment [1,2] . However, to reach the percolation concentration (The filler concentration at which a pathway of the conductive filler is formed through the matrix), the PTC composites have to have a high loading of CB, which usually results in degradation of both mechanical and processing properties of the composites.Ideally, PTC materials should have low room temperature electric resistivity, low electric dopant loading and high PTC performance. MWCNT has high electrical conductivity, high network forming ability and lower cost, therefore, using MWCNT rather than CB as conductive filler is a research interest for many scientists [3,4] . He et al. synthesized a polymer PTC composite with MWCNT and high-density polyethylene (HDPE). It was found that the room temperature resistivity of the HDPE/ MWCNT PTC composites decreased from 10 15 Ω·m to 10 4 Ω·m with 3 wt% MWCNT loading, while the PTC intensity of MWNT/HDPE composite with 5.4 wt% MWCNT could reach 1.1×10 4 [3] .Because the polymer PTC composites are mainly used to make temperature sensitive devices [5] , heat transport performance is very important for their application. However, the TC of MWCNT/polymer composites is rarely studied compared with their electrical conductivity. In the present work, the TC of HDPE/ MWCNT PTC composites was measured by laser pulse method. A new percolation model was developed to simulate the TC of HDPE/MWCNT composite.