Flexible phase change materials for overheating protection of electronics

With the increase of power density of electronics, adequate overheating protection of electronics is quite urgent, especially for wearable electronics integrated with biological tissues. Herein, flexible leakage-proof phase change materials (PCMs) with state-of-the-art overheating protection capability were fabricated by a scalable static polymer swelling method. The resultant flexible PCMs exhibited a high latent heat energy storage density of 136.5 J/g and pronounced shape stability even with a temperature resistance of 120 °C. The demonstration of wearable electronics with our fabricated flexible PCMs as the overheating protection substrate illustrated that the generated heat of wearable electronics could be absorbed by flexible PCMs-based overheating protection substrate, significantly reducing the rate of temperature rise of the skin and the chip, ultimately maintaining a safer temperature. The present study represents an important route to solve the overheating problem of wearable electronics integrated with biological tissues.