writer：Dong-Liang Ding, Shi-Yu Zhang, Hao-Yu Liang, Xu Wang, Ya Wu, Yuan-Ming Ye, Zhen-Guo Liu, Qiu-Yu
keywords：Silicon carbide fibers, Silicon carbide nanowires, Silicone rubber composites, Through-plane thermal conductivity, First principles.
source：期刊
specific source：Nano Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4639-1.
Issue time：2022年
  Polymer composites as thermal interface materials have been widely used in modern electronic equipment. In this work, we report a novel method to prepare highly through-plane thermally conductive silicone rubber (SR) composites with vertically aligned silicon carbide fibers (VA-SiCFs) entangled by SiC nanowires (SiCNWs) networks. First, a series of carbon fibers (CFs) skeletons were fabricated in sequence of coating poor thermally conductive polyacrylonitrile-based CFs with polydopamine, ice-templated assembly and freeze-drying processes. Furthermore, VA-SiCFs networks, i.e., long-range continuous SiCFs-SiCNWs networks, based on the prepared CFs skeletons, were in-situ obtained via template-assisted chemical vapor deposition method. The thermal conductivity enhancement mechanism of VA-SiCFs networks on its SR composites was also intensively studied by finite element simulation, based on the first principles investigation of SiC, and Foygel’s theory. The in-situ grown VA-SiCFs networks possess high intrinsic thermal conductivity without the thermal interface between fillers, acting as the high-efficiency through-plane long-range continuous thermal conduction path, in which the SiCNWs were the in-plane “thermal spreader”. The VA-SiCFs/SR composites reached a high through-plane thermal conductivity, 2.13 W/(m·K), at the filler loading of 15 vol%, which is 868.2 %, and 249.2 % higher than that of pure SR sample, and random-CFs@PDA/SR composites at the same content, respectively. The VA-SiCFs/SR composites also exhibited good electrical insulation performance and excellent dimensional stability, which guaranteed the stable interfacial heat transfer of high-power density electronic devices.