Enhanced Thermal Conductivity of Epoxy Composites Filled with 2D Transition Metal Carbides (MXenes) with Ultralow Loading

Ruiyang Kang,Xiao Hou,Yapeng Chen,Jinhong Yu,Bo Wang,Junfeng Cui,Zhenyu Zhang,Liangchao Guo,Cheng-Te Lin,Nan Jiang

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-45664-4

Abstract

With the development of electronic devices such as integrated circuits toward the continual increase in power density and consumption, the efficient heat dissipation and low thermal expansion of materials become one of the most important issue. However, conventional polymers have the problem of poor thermal dissipation performance, which hinder application for electronic devices. In this work, the two-dimensional material, MXene (Ti3C2), is used as the reinforcement additive to optimize the thermal properties of polymers. We reported the preparation of multilayer Ti3C2 MXene by HF etching method and obtained few-layer Ti3C2 MXene by simple ultrasonication. Meanwhile, Ti3C2/epoxy composites were prepared by a solution blending method. The results show that the thermal properties of the composites are improved in comparison with the neat epoxy. Thermal conductivity value (0.587 W/mK) of epoxy composite with only 1.0 wt% Ti3C2 MXene fillers, is increased by 141.3% compared with that of neat epoxy. In addition, the composite presents an increased glass transition temperature, high thermal stability and lower coefficient of thermal expansion. This work is of great significance for the research of high-performance composite materials.

Highlights

Nowadays, two-dimensional materials have attracted more and more attention since the discovery of graphene[6]
The results indicate that ultrasonication is effective for converting multi-layered Ti3C2 MXene into few-layer Ti3C2 MXene
From a high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image, Fig. 2(d), the lattice of Ti3C2 can be observed clearly, which illustrates that Ti3C2 MXene is a kind of crystal

Summary

Introduction

Two-dimensional materials have attracted more and more attention since the discovery of graphene[6]. As a novel type of two-dimensional transition metal carbides or carbonitrides, MXenes possess a graphene-like two-dimensional structure and synthesized by HF selectively etching away A atom layers of the MAX phases[11,12] They possess a unique two-dimensional layered structure, high specific surface area, glorious thermal properties, outstanding adsorption properties, excellent mechanical properties and electrical properties. A lot of nanomaterials have been researched as fillers and reported in previous works, such as graphene[38,39], boron nitride[40,41,42,43], and silicon carbide nanowires[44,45] These works demonstrate that the thermal, mechanical and electrical property can be significantly enhanced by addition of nanomaterials. The fabricated composites with ultralow loading showed higher thermal conductivity, glass transition temperature (Tg), thermal stability and lower coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) compared with that of neat epoxy

Methods

Results

Conclusion