Designing advanced OD-2D hierarchical structure for Epoxy resin to accomplish exceeding thermal management and safety

Epoxy resin (EP) is widely used in the package of modern electronic products for thermal management, but the extremely flammability and toxicity release have restricted its further application. In this article, zinc hydroxystannate (ZHS) nanocubes were in-situ fabricated on the surface of titanium carbide (Ti3C2Tx) MXene nanosheets (ZHS@M) for improving the thermal management capacity of EP. Due to the phonon thermal conductance from ZHS and electron-hole thermal conductance of Ti3C2Tx, the thermal conductivity was improved by 328% compared with the neat EP, which was benefit to dissipate heat for reducing the possibility of thermal disaster chain happening. Furthermore, owing to the OD-2D hierarchical structure of ZHS@M, the fire safety and smoke suppression of these EP composites were highly strengthened. The peak heat release rate (pHRR) and total heat release (THR) decreased by 54.91% and 58.74%, respectively. Moreover, hazardous gases of EP during the combustion were also efficiently reduced, and the generation of carbon oxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2) were decreased by 44.44% and 39.46% when the additive of ZHS@M was only 2 wt%. As a result, ternary catalytic effect and labyrinth structure improved the safety of EP in the thermal runaway incidents. Besides, EP2.0 ZHS@M exhibited excellent tensile robustness (64.71 MPa) and modulus (2.39 GPa), which regarded as a reliable supporting material for electronics in thermal management field. Hence, this hierarchical EP-ZHS@M composites provided the help of cleaning the thermal accumulation and increasing fire safety while facing thermal runaway, which was significant to destroy the formation of thermal disaster chain and further applications of the modern electrons and devices.

Automated summary

In this study, ZHS nanocubes were in-situ fabricated on Ti3C2Tx nanosheets to improve the thermal management capacity and fire safety of EP. The OD-2D hierarchical structure of ZHS@M enhanced the safety of EP by reducing heat release rate and hazardous gases during combustion, while also improving tensile robustness for electronics in thermal management field. This hierarchical EP-ZHS@M composites provide significant benefits in cleaning thermal accumulation, increasing fire safety, and preventing thermal disaster chain formation in modern electronic devices.