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Preparation and performance study of thermally conductive coatings with mixed fillers

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Abstract

The increasing demand for effective thermal management has led to a growing need for composite coatings with high thermal conductivity (TC). In this work, we developed a novel approach to enhance the TC of polymer coatings by incorporating hybrid fillers composed of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and graphitic carbon (GC). The process involved the creation of hybrid fibers through wet spinning, combining biomass polysaccharide sodium alginate with bulk h-BN, followed by controlled carbonization at varying temperatures. During carbonization, the in-situ generation of small-molecule compounds facilitated the preparation of BN nanosheets and the formation of a unique BN and graphitic carbon (BN-GC) preassembled  heterostructure. By adjusting the carbonization temperature, the degree of graphitization was controlled in the hybrid fillers. Subsequently, these hybrid fillers were blended with a polymer matrix to create photocurable coatings. Leveraging the intrinsic high thermal conductivity of BN nanosheets and the low interfacial thermal resistance between BN and GC, our composite coatings demonstrated a remarkable enhancement in TC. Notably, with a filler content of 20 wt%, the resulting composite coating exhibited an impressive in-plane and out-of-plane TC of up to 2.34 and 0.41 W/(m K), respectively. This innovative approach holds significant promise for improving the thermal performance of polymer coatings in various applications.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21803025), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20180583), the Science and Technology Support Program of Jiangsu Province (BE2022087), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JUSRP11711), and MOE & SAFEA for the 111 Project (B13025).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Synthetic and Biological Colloids, Ministry of Education, School of Chemical and Material Engineering, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, China

    Lulu Ban, Yaxing Zhao, Chen Chen, Binjie Yang, Ren Liu & Xinxin Sang

  2. Hiwing Materials Industrial Co. Ltd., Suzhou, 215143, China

    Chao Chen & Shuai Zhang

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  1. Lulu Ban
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  2. Yaxing Zhao
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  3. Chen Chen
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  7. Ren Liu
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Contributions

LB contributed to writing—original draft, validation, investigation, and data curation. YZ contributed to investigation and formal analysis. CC contributed to investigation and methodology. BY and CC contributed to investigation and validation. RL contributed to methodology and visualization. SZ contributed to conceptualization and methodology. XS contributed to writing—review & editing, formal analysis, conceptualization, and project administration.

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Correspondence to Xinxin Sang.

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Ban, L., Zhao, Y., Chen, C. et al. Preparation and performance study of thermally conductive coatings with mixed fillers. J Coat Technol Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11998-024-00915-6

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