Thermally conductive, mechanically strong dielectric film made from aramid nanofiber and edge-hydroxylated boron nitride nanosheet for thermal management applications

Polymer-based dielectric films with desirable heat dissipation property hold great promise as thermal management materials in advanced electronics and high power devices. Herein, we report a new strategy for preparing thermally conductive films by synergistically combining one-dimensional (1D) aramid nanofiber (ANF) with 2D edge-hydroxylated boron nitride nanosheet (OH-BNNS) via a vacuum-assisted self-assembly technique. The obtained ANF/OH-BNNS film exhibits an ultrahigh in-plane thermal conductivity of 32.3 W m−1K−1 at 40 wt% BNNS-OH loading, which is 3530% greater than that of the pure ANF film. The excellent thermal conductivity results from the special ‘brick-and-mortar’ layered structure of ANF/OH-BNNS, in which the increased contacting and overlapping of OH-BNNS promotes the formation of the thermal conduction pathways. In addition, the rigid ANFs act as bridges linking OH-BNNS by favorable hydrogen bonding interactions, which efficiently enhance phonon propagation and stress transfer in the film. Moreover, the ANF/OH-BNNS film simultaneously shows low dielectric loss (~0.03), high tensile strength (~88 MPa), and a high decomposition temperature (>510 °C). We believe that these findings are of great importance for the fabrication and practical application of thermal management materials in high-temperature electronics and devices.