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Thermally conductive glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites with intrinsic self-healing capability

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Abstract

To tackle the challenges of insufficient heat conduction capacity and thermally/mechanically induced internal damages of glass fiber reinforced epoxy composite (that traditionally serves as circuit board substrate), hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) was functionalized using natural flavonoid dihydromyricetin (DMY) and then compounded with reversible Diels–Alder (DA) bonds crosslinked epoxy and glass fiber cloth (GFC) reinforcement to fabricate self-healing thermally conductive glass fiber cloth reinforced epoxy (GFREP) composite by a facile two-step coating method. Particularly, the GFC was coated with the solution containing high concentration modified h-BN, and then impregnated with dip coating solution containing lower concentration h-BN. The gradient variation of modified h-BN concentration not only effectively reduced the interfacial heat resistance, but also avoided excessive deterioration of mechanical strength. The produced GFREP composite exhibited excellent in-plane (6.22 W m−1 K−1) and through-plane (1.53 W m−1 K−1) thermal conductivities at 35.0 wt% h-BN content. The reversible DA reaction helped to realize interlaminar crack healing of the composite as characterized by high degrees of recovery of mechanical strength (70 ~ 85%) and thermal conductivities (62 ~ 89%). Besides, the attenuated thermal conductivity caused by interfacial debonding between copper clad and the composite in the model copper clad laminates can also be restored via the same mechanism. Lastly, the composite laminates proved to be coupled with controlled degradability in good solvent so that they can be recycled. This study offered an efficient way to prolong the service life of thermally conductive GFREP composite for integrated circuit packaging applications.

Graphical abstract

The reversible DA reaction at the crack interface proves to be able to recover the structural integrity, which pushes the physical reconnection of the separated h-BN micron sheets residing on the fractured surfaces at the same time and re-establishes the continuous phonon transfer pathways.

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Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 52033011, 51873235, 51773229 and 51973237), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (Grants 2019B1515120038, 2021A1515010417, and 2020A1515011276), Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (Grant 2020B010179001), and Industry-University-Research Collaboration Project of Zhuhai City (Grant ZH22017001200004PWC).

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Author notes

  1. Fang Chen and Hua Xiao contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Polymeric Composite and Functional Materials of Ministry of Education, GD HPPC Lab, School of Chemistry, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, People’s Republic of China

    Fang Chen, Hua Xiao, Ze Ping Zhang, Min Zhi Rong & Ming Qiu Zhang

  2. Kingfa Sci. & Tech., Co., Ltd, Guangzhou, 510663, People’s Republic of China

    Zhong Quan Peng

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  1. Fang Chen
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Contributions

Fang Chen: Data curation, Investigation. Hua Xiao: Investigation. Zhong Quan Peng: Resources. Ze Ping Zhang: Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing, Visualization, Funding acquisition. Min Zhi Rong: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition. Ming Qiu Zhang: Methodology, Writing-review and editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Ze Ping Zhang, Min Zhi Rong or Ming Qiu Zhang.

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Chen, F., Xiao, H., Peng, Z.Q. et al. Thermally conductive glass fiber reinforced epoxy composites with intrinsic self-healing capability. Adv Compos Hybrid Mater 4, 1048–1058 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-021-00303-3

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