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Fabrication and Design of Wood-Based High-Performance Composites
Published on: November 9, 2019
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Wood-Derived, Vertically Aligned, and Densely Interconnected 3D SiC Frameworks for Anisotropically Highly
Xiaonan Zhou1, Songsong Xu1, Zhongyu Wang1
1State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China.
Advanced Science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany)
|January 13, 2022
Summary
Researchers created advanced polymer composites with high thermal conductivity by mimicking wood's structure using a novel biotemplate ceramization method. This offers a new way to improve thermal management in electronics.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Polymer Science
- Nanotechnology
Background:
- Achieving high thermal conductivity in polymer composites is challenging due to difficulties in creating ordered 3D filler networks.
- Biomaterials offer unique microstructures that can inspire the design of advanced composite materials.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a facile and effective method for fabricating anisotropic polymer composites with enhanced thermal properties.
- To explore the potential of biotemplate ceramization technology for creating high-performance thermal management materials.
Main Methods:
- Fabrication of anisotropic polymer composites using biotemplate ceramization of biomass-derived silicon carbide (bioSiC) followed by epoxy resin impregnation.
- Replication of the hierarchical microstructure of wood in the bioSiC framework via carbothermal reduction.
Main Results:
- The resulting epoxy composite exhibited a high thermal conductivity (10.27 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹) with significant enhancement efficiency (259 per 1 vol% loading).
- The material demonstrated an outstanding anisotropic thermal conductivity ratio (5.77), extremely low coefficient of linear thermal expansion (12.23 ppm K⁻¹), high flexural strength (222 MPa), and excellent flame resistance.
Conclusions:
- The biotemplate ceramization approach successfully created polymer composites with vertically aligned SiC microchannels, mimicking wood's structure.
- This method provides a promising new avenue for designing and preparing high-performance thermal management materials for applications like modern electronics.
