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Skin mimicking-sweating evaporation polyimide cooling film for electronic devices

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Abstract

In hot environments, the human body shows an efficient capability to maintain a stable temperature by benefiting from sweating behavior. Inspired by this skin perspiration strategy, in this study, we demonstrated an innovative polyimide foam (PIF)-based mimetic skin with excellent cooling capability by integrating a silver coating and reusable hydrogel for the first time. Because of the hybrid thermal dissipating system, the successive silver coating quickly transferred heat to the inside of the polyacrylamide hydrogel. Meanwhile, the hydrogel absorbed a large amount of heat due to its large enthalpy and effectively dissipated heat to the environment through the evaporation of moisture, similar to the sweating of skin. Thus, the temperature of the skin-like film was reduced by 25.4°C compared with pure PIF under a high-power laser heating source. Identical and remarkable cooling effects were also obtained in mobile phone and battery applications, far better than commercially available thermally conductive polyimide (PI). This outstanding performance paves a new way for the thermal management application of PI in wearable electronics, microprocessors, and flexible electronics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Lab of Photovoltaic and Energy Conservation Materials, Institute of Solid State Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China

    Miao Jiang, Chao Xiao, XuSheng He, YanYan Wang, Xin Ding, Xian Zhang, XiaoFei Li, Kang Zheng, XiangLan Liu, Lin Chen & XingYou Tian

  2. Science Island Branch, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Miao Jiang, XuSheng He & XiaoFei Li

  3. Lu’an Branch, Anhui Institute of Innovation for Industrial Technology, Lu’an, 237000, China

    Chao Xiao, Xian Zhang & Kang Zheng

  4. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei, 230039, China

    HuiChao Du

Authors
  1. Miao Jiang
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  2. Chao Xiao
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  3. XuSheng He
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  4. HuiChao Du
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  5. YanYan Wang
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  6. Xin Ding
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  7. Xian Zhang
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  8. XiaoFei Li
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  9. Kang Zheng
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  10. XiangLan Liu
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  11. Lin Chen
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  12. XingYou Tian
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Chao Xiao or XingYou Tian.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. U21A2094), CASHIPS Director’s Fund (Grant Nos. YZJJZX202015, YZJJ202304-CX, and YZJJ2023QN36), and the Anhui Province Postdoctoral Researcher Research Project (Grant No. E24F0D27).

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The supporting information is available online at https://tech.scichina.com and https://link.springer.com. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

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Jiang, M., Xiao, C., He, X. et al. Skin mimicking-sweating evaporation polyimide cooling film for electronic devices. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 66, 2797–2807 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-023-2374-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-023-2374-0

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