Simultaneously Improved Thermal and Dielectric Performance of Epoxy Composites Containing Ti₃C₂T_x Platelet Fillers

Polymer composites with enhanced thermal and dielectric properties can be widely used in electric and energy related applications. In this work, epoxy composites have been prepared with Ti₃C₂T_x, one of the most studied MXene materials that can be massively produced by direct etching using hydrofluoric acid. The addition of conductive two dimensional Ti₃C₂T_x platelet fillers leads to improved but anisotropic thermal conductivity of the composites. The through-plane thermal conductivity reaches 0.583 Wm^-1K^-1 and the in-plane thermal conductivity reaches 1.29 Wm^-1K^-1 when filler content is 40 wt% (21.3 vol%), achieving enhancements of 2.92 times and 10.65 times respectively, as compared with epoxy matrix. The dielectric permittivity of epoxy composite is enhanced by a factor of ~2.25 with 40 wt% fillers, and the dielectric losses are within a small value of 0.02. The results prove the effectiveness of Ti₃C₂T_x in simultaneously improving thermal and dielectric performance of epoxy composites, and it is deduced that further improvements may be obtained by using Ti₃C₂T_x nanoflake fillers.