Enhanced Thermal Conductivity of Polyimide Composites Filled with Modified h-BN and Nanodiamond Hybrid Filler

A new thermally conductive and electrically insulative polyimide were prepared by filling different amounts of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) particles, and the thermal conductivity of Polyimide (PI) composites were improved with the increasing h-BN content. Based on this, two methods were applied to improve thermal conductivity furtherly at limited filler loading in this paper. One is modifying the h-BN to improve interface interaction, another is fabricating a nano-micro hybrid filler with 2-D h-BN and 0-D nano-scale nanodiamond (ND) to build more effective conductive network. Both surface modification and hybrid system have a positive effect on thermal conductivity. The composites introducing 40 wt% hybrid filler (the weight ratio of ND/modified BN was 1/10) showed the highest thermal conductivity, being up to 0.98 W/(m.K) (5.2 times that of PI). In addition, the composites exhibits excellent electrical insulation, thermal stability properties etc.