Highly thermally conductive and eco-friendly OH-h-BN/chitosan nanocomposites by constructing a honeycomb thermal network

Qian Zou; Si-Wei Xiong; Meng-Ying Jiang; Li-Ye Chen; Ke Zheng; Pei-Gen Fu; Jing-Gang Gai

doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118127

Highly thermally conductive and eco-friendly OH-h-BN/chitosan nanocomposites by constructing a honeycomb thermal network

Carbohydr Polym. 2021 Aug 15:266:118127. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118127. Epub 2021 Apr 28.

Authors

Qian Zou¹, Si-Wei Xiong¹, Meng-Ying Jiang¹, Li-Ye Chen¹, Ke Zheng¹, Pei-Gen Fu¹, Jing-Gang Gai²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610065, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610065, China. Electronic address: gaijinggang@scu.edu.cn.

PMID: 34044943
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2021.118127

Abstract

More than 110,000,000 tons of mismanaged plastics were to be produced in 2020. Polymers are favored in the preparation of thermally conductive materials due to their excellent comprehensive properties. However, most polymers fabricated for thermally conductive materials are difficult to degrade in the natural environment. To alleviate the increasingly severe environmental problems, we reported a novel eco-friendly material with high thermal conductivity, which was composited of chitosan microspheres (CSM) and hydroxyl-functionalized hexagonal boron nitride (OH-h-BN) nanoplatelets. Utilizing their significant difference in scales, the OH-h-BN nanoplatelets were arranged between each CSM. Their overall structure was similar to the honeycomb: CSM were honeycomb cores, and OH-h-BN nanoplatelets were honeycomb network. The routine-structure OH-h-BN/CS nanocomposites were only 0.94 ± 0.02 W·m^-1·K^-1 at 50 wt% in thermal conductivity. However, the OH-h-BN/CSM nanocomposites with honeycomb structure can reach 5.66 ± 0.32 W·m^-1·K^-1 in the same loading, for enhancement of 502% and 1914% than OH-h-BN/CS nanocomposites and pure CS, respectively.

Keywords: Chitosan microspheres; Eco-friendly material; Honeycomb structure; Thermal conductivity; h-BN nanoplatelets.