Enabling energy efficient electronics through thermally conductive plastic composites: Novel surface modification techniques for boron nitride in epoxy

Abstract

Thermal management is an ongoing concern in electronics largely because of the challenging specifications of the substrate materials. Substrates must be electrically insulating so as to not interfere with devices or circuits, and so historically have had very poor thermal conductivity. These low thermal conductivity substrates cause heat to build up around devices, raising the local operating temperature and decreasing energy efficiency and device lifetime. This work focuses on creating thermally conductive, electrically insulating epoxy/boron nitride composites. Past work has been limited by the necessity of very high loading levels of BN required to achieve acceptable thermal conductivities (>5W/mK).