Effect of Boron Nitride Particle Geometry on the Thermal Conductivity of a Boron Nitride Enhanced Polymer Composite Film

Hexagonal Boron Nitride (h-BN) has been considered as a promising enhancement filler for thermal management due to its high thermal conductivity, structural stability, and super electrical resistivity. Numerus studies have reported using BN as an enhancement filler to achieve high thermally conductive polymer based thermal management materials. However, there are limited data regarding the influence of the flake size of BN sheets to the thermal management property of BN filled composites. In this work, three h-BN size geometries, including microscale h-BN powder, h-BN nanosheets, and a mixture of micro and nanoscale h-BN, were studied regarding its thermal transfer performance. The results show that h-BN nanosheets are able to achieve the highest in-plane thermal conductivity with loading from 0 - 5 wt% while for the through-plane thermal conductivity, all three geometries show similar thermal property when the filler loading less than 5 wt%. Through-plane thermal conductivity exhibits a sudden increase to 5.69 W m-1 K-1 at a loading of 5 wt%.