Fabrication of a thermally conductive silicone composite by incorporating surface-modified boron nitride

Abstract

Digitization in the textile industry provides an effective manufacturing process; however, the integration of automation with computerization requires an excellent computer support system with a long lifespan. The lifespan of a computer is dependent on the heat generated from the system. The use of heatsinks combined with elastomeric thermal pads is a solution for heat dissipation. Silicone rubber composites exhibit excellent thermal conductivity with the incorporation of boron nitride (BN) as a filler. In this study, tetraethoxy orthosilicate (TEOS), a silane coupling agent, was doped onto to the surface of hydroxyl-functionalized BN using a simple sol-gel process for surface modification. The addition of BN filler up to 45 wt% enhanced the thermal conductivity of the composites and the surface modification of BN had an appreciable effect on the thermal conductivity, with a 16.52% improvement. The addition of TEOS improved the filler dispersion in the composite system and reduced the interfacial mismatch between the BN and silicone rubber. The tensile strength and hardness increased with the addition of the BN filler, but elongation at the break decreased at high filler loadings. Surface modification with 7 wt% TEOS improved the mechanical properties of the composite.

Hypergravity-Induced Accumulation: A New, Efficient, and Simple Strategy to Improve the Thermal Conductivity of Boron Nitride Filled Polymer Composites

“…Figure 8 c shows a thermal conductivity comparison between the BN/SR composites in the open literature and in this work. As a kind of composite with isotropic thermal conductivity, our BN/SR composites prepared with hypergravity treatments have obviously higher thermal conductivity than those in the literature [ 46 , 47 , 48 ]. Our thermal conductivity is even higher than that of some BN/SR composites with anisotropic structures [ 49 , 50 ].…”

Effects of functionalization and silane modification of hexagonal boron nitride on thermal/mechanical/morphological properties of silicon rubber nanocomposite

“…This problem mainly affects the dispersion of h-BNs in the polymers which leads to undesirable mechanical and thermal/electrical properties 14 . Surface modification could improve interfacial interactions of h-BNs to polymers 15 . The most challenging part in surface modification of boron nitride nanoparticles is their high chemical stability (with no functional groups on the surface) and lack of bonding sites (i.e.…”

A silicon rubber composite with enhanced thermal conductivity and mechanical properties based on nanodiamond and boron nitride fillers

“…To solve the heat dissipation problem, ceramic materials such as boron nitride (BN), [8] aluminum nitride (AlN), [9] alumina (Al 2 O 3 ), [10,11] and silica (SiO 2 ) [9] are frequently used as the thermally conductive materials that can be embedded into the polymer to make ceramic polymer composites. Compared to SiO 2 , Al 2 O 3 , and AlN as ceramic fillers, BN [12] with a hexagonal structure has the greatest potential due to its high thermal conductivity (up to 400 W/m K) and relatively low dielectric constant and it was also proven to have excellent insulation and low thermal expansion properties.…”