Aerogel Perfusion-Prepared h-BN/CNF Composite Film with Multiple Thermally Conductive Pathways and High Thermal Conductivity

Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN)-based heat-spreading materials have drawn considerable attention in electronic diaphragm and packaging fields because of their high thermal conductivity and desired electrical insulation properties. However, the traditional approach to fabricate thermally conductive composites usually suffers from low thermal conductivity, and cannot meet the requirement of thermal management. In this work, novel h-BN/cellulose-nano fiber (CNF) composite films with excellent thermal conductivity in through plane and electrical insulation properties are fabricated via an innovative process, i.e., the perfusion of h-BN into porous three dimensional (3D) CNF aerogel skeleton to form the h-BN thermally conductive pathways by filling the CNF aerogel voids. When at an h-BN loading of 9.51 vol %, the thermal conductivity of h-BN/CNF aerogel perfusion composite film is 1.488 W·m(−1)·K(−1) at through plane, an increase by 260.3%. The volume resistivity is 3.83 × 10(14) Ω·cm, superior to that of synthetic polymer materials (about 10(9)~10(13) Ω·cm). Therefore, the resulting h-BN/CNF film is very promising to replace the traditional synthetic polymer materials for a broad spectrum of applications, including the field of electronics.