Design of Silicon Rubber/BN Film with High Through-plane Thermal Conductivity and Ultra-low Contact Resistance

Polymer-hexagonal boron nitride (BN) composite has become an ideal thermal interface material (TIM) for electronic devices because of its high thermal conductivity and superior electronic insulation. However, owing to the 2D shape and chemical inertness of BN filler, the vertical alignment of BN and the huge thermal resistance are current challenges, which hinder the efficient heat transfer of polymer/BN composites. Herein, by a novel non-solvent induced phase separation process combined "in-situ welding" strategy, we present the fabrication of silicone rubber film with finger-like continuous BN-welded filler skeleton, which reveals a high through-plane thermal conductivity of 15.4 W m−1K−1 at only ∼ 15 wt% BN. Finite element simulation and nonlinear model analyses theoretically confirm that the filler-to-filler interfacial thermal resistance (ITR) is halved after in-situ welding process. In addition, thanks to the excellent compressibility and conformability of silicon rubber matrix, the contact thermal resistance (<70 Kmm2W−1) of this composite film is much lower than that of the commercial thermal pad under different pressure. The proposed strategy opens up a novel and high-throughput preparation strategy for the high-performance TIM for modern electronic devices.