Surface modified boron nitride towards enhanced thermal and mechanical performance of thermoplastic polyurethane composite

Owing to the unpredictable advancement in electronic devices, the demand for highly thermally conductive and electrically insulating material is increasing day by day. Besides, surface treatment of chemically inert hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) sheets found challenging and a distressing contention towards its acceptable thermal transportation. Herein, h-BN sheets are functionalized with divergent amines (its three isomers) to obtain their astonishing properties like high disperse ability and development of interfacial conduction in polymer composite. This comparative study elucidates the significance of the covalent interaction of amines (-NH2) with h-BN lattice as well as strong hydrogen bonding with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) matrix. It is demonstrated that both ortho-phenylenediamine o-PDA-BN and para-phenylenediamine p-PDA-BN filled TPU composites exhibit higher through-plane thermal conductivity (TC) of 2.06 and 1.96 W m-1 K-1 respectively by substantially establishing a higher thermal transportation path at high filler loading of 45 wt %. Whereas, meta-phenylenediamine m-PDABN composites reveal somewhat low TC of 1.27 W m-1 K-1 at the same filler loading. Interestingly, all fabricated composites consisting of functionalized BN (f-BN) and TPU show unprecedented thermal and mechanical properties at such a high filler loading which demonstrates their great potential for packaging application in microelectronics.

Automated summary

By functionalizing hexagonal boron nitride sheets, this study achieved high thermal conductivity and superior mechanical properties in thermoplastic polyurethane composites at high filler loading, demonstrating great potential for packaging applications in microelectronics.