A Thermochromic, Viscoelastic Nacre-like Nanocomposite for the Smart Thermal Management of Planar Electronics.

ABSTRACT: Cutting-edge heat spreaders for soft and planar electronics require not only high thermal conductivity and a certain degree of flexibility but also remarkable self-adhesion without thermal interface materials, elasticity, arbitrary elongation along with soft devices, and smart properties involving thermal self-healing, thermochromism and so on. Nacre-like composites with excellent in-plane heat dissipation are ideal as heat spreaders for thin and planar electronics. However, the intrinsically poor viscoelasticity, i.e., adhesion and elasticity, prevents them from simultaneous self-adhesion and arbitrary elongation along with current flexible devices as well as incurring high interfacial thermal impedance. In this paper, we propose a soft thermochromic composite (STC) membrane with a layered structure, considerable stretchability, high in-plane thermal conductivity (~ 30 W m^-1 K^-1), low thermal contact resistance (~ 12 mm² K W^-1, 4-5 times lower than that of silver paste), strong yet sustainable adhesion forces (~ 4607 J m^-2, 2220 J m^-2 greater than that of epoxy paste) and self-healing efficiency. As a self-adhesive heat spreader, it implements efficient cooling of various soft electronics with a temperature drop of 20 °C than the polyimide case. In addition to its self-healing function, the chameleon-like behavior of STC facilitates temperature monitoring by the naked eye, hence enabling smart thermal management.

SUBMITTER: Wang J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10322808 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature