Annealing Temperature Effect on the Structure of High Thermal Conductivity Silver/Epoxy Nanocomposites

摘要

The thermal conductivity k of polymer nanoparticle composites is typically <10 Wm~(-1)K~(-1), even when high k nanofillers are employed, due to the thermal interface resistance between nanoparticles and the polymer matrix1 or the absence of high thermal conductivity pathways. We recently demonstrated high k in bulk nanocomposites of silver nanoparticles dispersed in epoxy and cured at low temperature (150 °C). A nanocomposite with 30 vol. % 20nm particles exhibited k ～30 Wm~(-1)K~(12) The mechanism responsible for enhancing k was found to be the self-construction, through in-situ sintering, of high aspect ratio metallic networks inside the nanocomposite. In order to control and optimize the network structure and subsequently increase k even further, this work focuses on studying the effects of curing temperature and nanoparticle surface coating on the structure of the nanocomposite.