Fluidic phase-change materials with continuous latent heat from theoretically tunable ternary metals for efficient thermal management

Phase-change materials (PCMs), as important energy storage materials (ESMs), have been widely used in heat dissipation for electronics. However, PCMs are encountering huge challenges since the extremely limited space in microelectronics largely suppresses the applied volume of PCMs, which demands excellent PCMs that can fully utilize the valuable latent heat. This work successfully found a universal strategy toward powerful ESMs from fluidic ternary metals (TMs, GaInSn as a representative TM in this work). TMs exhibit high thermal conductivity (20.3 W m(-1) K-1) and significantly effective latent heat (115 J/cm(3)) and, more important, show continuous phase transition and full utilization of the valuable latent heat. Interestingly, theoretical prediction through ternary phase diagram is carried out to easily tune the melting range, latent heat, and fluidity (viscosity) of TMs to adapt with different service conditions. As a result, thermally conductive silicone grease can be conveniently fabricated via simple shear mixing of TM and polymers. Such thermally conductive TM grease inherits the merits of TM, exhibiting continuous thermal control over daily electronics according to thermal shock performance.

Automated summary

This study presents a universal strategy for obtaining powerful energy storage materials from ternary metals, which can be used for heat dissipation in microelectronics. The strategy enables the tuning of melting range, latent heat, and fluidity of the ternary metals, allowing for the convenient fabrication of thermally conductive silicone grease.