The effective dissipation of heat is critical to the performance and longevity of high-power electronics, so it is important to prepare highly thermally conductive polymer-based packaging materials for efficient thermal management. Due to the excellent thermal conductivity of boron nitride nanosheets (BNNSs), the hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) powder was dissolved in a mixed solution of isopropanol and deionized water for ultrasonic exfoliation to obtain hydroxylated BN nanosheets. Then, the prepared BNNS was functionalized with (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) to enhance its dispersibility and interfacial compatibility in the epoxy resin, which play an important role in the improvement of the thermal conductivity of the composites. Finally, APTES-BNNS was uniformly dispersed in the epoxy resin by solvent mixing, and the oriented APTES-BNNS/epoxy composites were prepared through spin-coating and hot-pressing methods. It was found that APTES-BNNS/epoxy composites prepared herein exhibited significant anisotropic thermal conductivity. The results show that the thermal conductivity of APTES-BNNS/epoxy composites reached 5.86 W/mK at a filler content of 40 wt % and these composites have favorable thermal stability and mechanical properties. The APTES-BNNS/epoxy composite prepared in this paper has excellent thermal management capability and can be applied to the packaging of high-power electronic devices.
Keywords: epoxy; functionalized BNNS; interfacial compatibility; oriented; thermal conductivity.