Ice-Templated MXene/Ag-Epoxy Nanocomposites as High-Performance Thermal Management Materials

High-performance thermal management materials are essential in miniaturized, highly integrated, and high-power modern electronics for heat dissipation. In this context, the large interface thermal resistance (ITR) that occurs between fillers and the organic matrix in polymer-based nanocomposites greatly limits their thermal conductive performance. Herein, through-plane direction aligned three-dimensional (3D) MXene/silver (Ag) aerogels are designed as heat transferring skeletons for epoxy nanocomposites. Ag nanoparticles (NPs) were in situ decorated on exfoliated MXene nanosheets to ensure good contact, and subsequent welding of ice-templated MXene/Ag nanofillers at low temperature of ∼200 °C reduced contact resistance between individual MXene sheets. Monte Carlo simulations suggest that thermal interficial resistance (R₀) of the MXene/Ag-epoxy nanocomposite was 4.5 × 10^-7 m² W^-1 K^-1, which was less than that of the MXene-epoxy nanocomposite (R_c = 5.2 × 10^-7 m² W^-1 K^-1). Furthermore, a large-scale atomic/molecular massively parallel simulator was employed to calculate the interfacial resistance. It was found that R_MXene = 2.4 × 10^-9 m² K W^-1, and R_MXene-Ag = 2.0 ×10^-9 m² K W^-1, respectively, indicating that the Ag NP enhanced the interfacial heat transport. At a relatively low loading of 15.1 vol %, through-plane thermal conductivity reached a value as high as 2.65 W m^-1 K^-1, which is 1225 % higher than that of pure epoxy resin. Furthermore, MXene/Ag-epoxy nanocomposite film exhibits an impressive thermal conductive property when applied on a Millet 8 and Dell computer for heat dissipation.