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One-step exfoliation and deprotonation of ANF/BNNS suspension for constructing 3D vertically aligned skeleton in epoxy-based thermal management composites

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Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) boron nitride nanosheet (BNNS) is promising in polymer-based thermal management materials (TMMs) by pre-constructing three-dimensional (3D) thermally conductive skeleton, but it yet suffers from the challenges of high-effective exfoliation and affinitive compatibility with matrix. In this work, we developed a one-step exfoliation and deprotonation approach by the high-effective ball milling technique to prepare aramid nanofiber (ANF)/BNNS suspension. Under the strong collision/shear effect of ball-milling, micron-level hBN sheets were exfoliated into smaller and thinner BNNS with edge functional groups, meanwhile, poly-p-phenylene terephthalamide (PPTA) fibers were split into ANF by dissociating the intermolecular hydrogen bonds. More importantly, both the exfoliation and deprotonation could be accelerated by each other to achieve a 100% yield of ANF/BNNS suspension with strong hydrogen/covalent bonding interactions between them. Subsequently, the prepared ANF/BNNS suspension was used to construct 3D vertically aligned ANF/BNNS skeleton by the unidirectional freezing method. The obtained epoxy-based composite (EP/ANF/BNNS) revealed excellent thermal conductivity of 2.41 Wm−1 K−1 at 14.9 vol% BNNS loading due to the vertically oriented heat conduction paths and low interfacial thermal resistance in the skeleton. Moreover, EP/ANF/BNNS composite showed high thermal stability and extraordinary fire retardancy with dramatically decreased heat release rate (265 W g−1) and total heat release (20.6 kJ g−1). Therefore, this work demonstrates a high-efficient one-step ball-milling exfoliation and deprotonation technique for preparing ANF/BNNS suspension, which reveals an enormous potential in preparing advanced TMMs by constructing 3D thermally conductive skeletons.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Mold Ministry of Education, National Engineering Research Center for Advanced Polymer Processing Technology, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450002, China

    GaoJie Han, PeiWen Xue, ZhengHao Cai, YueZhan Feng, ChunTai Liu & ChangYu Shen

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  1. GaoJie Han
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  2. PeiWen Xue
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  4. YueZhan Feng
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  5. ChunTai Liu
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  6. ChangYu Shen
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to YueZhan Feng or ChunTai Liu.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2019YFA0706802), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51903223 and 12072325), the Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province (Grant No. 222300420541), and the Key Technologies R&D Program of Henan Province (Grant No. 212102210302).

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One-step exfoliation and deprotonation of ANF/BNNS suspension for constructing 3D vertically aligned skeleton in epoxy-based thermal management composites

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Han, G., Xue, P., Cai, Z. et al. One-step exfoliation and deprotonation of ANF/BNNS suspension for constructing 3D vertically aligned skeleton in epoxy-based thermal management composites. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 65, 2675–2686 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-022-2168-3

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