Preparation of Composite Cooling Boards Composed of Thermal Conductive Silica Gel and Phase Change Materials for Battery Thermal Management

To prevent the leakage phenomenon and reduce the thermal contact resistance of composite phase change material (CPCM) boards in battery thermal management (BTM) applications, we develop a kind of composite board by enclosing a CPCM plate with a thermal conductive silica gel (TCSG) shell. The compact and flexible TCSG shell effectively prevents the leakage phenomenon and provides a flexible contact interface between the boards and cells to reduce the thermal contact resistance and buffer the compressive stress accumulation. Consequently, the CPCM enclosed with TCSG (TCSG-CPCM) delivers an excellent antileakage performance under high temperatures, even up to 140 °C, and demonstrates a much better temperature-control performance in comparison to traditional CPCM boards in BTM applications. For example, during cyclic charge–discharge tests at the rates of 3C-3C, the maximum temperature and temperature difference of the battery module cooled by TCSG-CPCM boards can be controlled below 52.6 and 4.4 °C, respectively, much lower than those of the battery module cooled by rigid CPCM boards. In addition, no leakage trace, which appears seriously in the bare CPCM board, is detected on the TCSG-CPCM board.