Molecular Approach To Enhance Thermal Conductivity in Electrically Conductive Adhesives

Abstract

Significant heat generation in modern high-speed electronic devices requires elevated thermal conductivity of electrically conductive adhesives (ECAs), but the gap between discrete filler materials significantly interrupts the pathway of heat transport. In this work, we demonstrated the 587% enhancement of thermal conductivity by adding a silver–organic complex (i.e., silver 2-ethylhexanoate) in an epoxy-based ECA with the optimal value of 4.7 W/mK at a low curing temperature of 180 °C. After the postannealing at 200 °C, the thermal conductivity can be further enhanced to 6.2 W/mK with high stability. In the presence of the silver–organic complex, the optimal die shear strength can be increased to 179% (38.06 MPa) compared to that of the blank samples. The silver–organic complex is capable of molecule-scale blending and forming ultrafine Ag particles (13–47 nm) well-distributed in the epoxy matrix, enabling gap-filling and bulky network sintering to achieve thermal conductivity enhancement.

Highly Conductive and Highly Dispersed Polythiophene Nanoparticles for Fabricating High-Performance Conductive Adhesives

“…The electrical conductivity of the ECAs could be elevated by increasing the amounts of PTh nanoparticles in the matrices (Figure 4b). In the PU-ECAs (PU-2) without PTh nanoparticles for comparison, the electrical resistivity was 4500 × 10 −5 Ω•cm, which is lower than the usual epoxy ECAs reported in the previous literature 48 due to low Ag content and curing temperature. After adding 1 wt % of PTh nanoparticles, the electrical resistivity drops sharply (from 4500 × 10 −5 to 81.6 × 10 −5 Ω•cm).…”

A self-driving laboratory designed to accelerate the discovery of adhesive materials

“…1 A wide range of ingredients are used to customize adhesives for different applications. [1][2][3][4] Optimized adhesive formulations may contain six or more components (Fig. 1).…”

A highly orientational architecture formed by covalently bonded graphene to achieve high through-plane thermal conductivity of polymer composites

“…[3][4][5][6] Polymer materials present comprehensive properties, such as great mechanical strength, high chemical stability, and relatively light weight, but show extremely low thermal conductivities of 0.1-0.5 W m −1 K −1 due to the amorphous arrangement of molecular chains, which seriously restricts their cooling efficiency. 7 Introducing highly thermally conductive fillers into polymer matrices is an efficient way to address this issue, [8][9][10][11][12][13] in which graphene has attracted a great deal of attention due to its ultrahigh intrinsic thermal conductivity of up to ∼5000 W m −1 K −1 along the basal plane. 14 Consequently, a series of graphene-enhanced polymer composites have been developed via direct solution or melt blending processes.…”