3D Printable concentrated liquid metal composite with high thermal conductivity

Sumin Moon; Hanul Kim; Kyoungmun Lee; Jinwon Park; Yunho Kim; Siyoung Q Choi

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.103183

3D Printable concentrated liquid metal composite with high thermal conductivity

iScience. 2021 Oct 2;24(10):103183. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103183. eCollection 2021 Oct 22.

Authors

Sumin Moon¹, Hanul Kim¹, Kyoungmun Lee¹, Jinwon Park¹, Yunho Kim², Siyoung Q Choi¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and KINC, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 34141, Korea.
² Advanced Functional Polymers Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT), Daejeon 34114, Korea.

Abstract

Heat dissipation materials in which fillers are dispersed in a polymer matrix typically do not exhibit both high thermal conductivity (k) and processability due to a trade-off. In this paper, we fabricate heat dissipation composites which overcome the trade-off using liquid metal (LM). By exceeding the conventional filler limit, ten times higher k is achieved for a 90 vol% LM composite compared with k of 50 vol% LM composite. Further, an even higher k is achieved by introducing h-BN between the LM droplets, and the highest k in this study was 17.1 W m^-1 K^-1. The LM composite is processable at room temperature and used as inks for 3D printing. This combination of high k and processability not only allows heat dissipation materials to be processed on demand under ambient conditions but it also increases the surface area of the LM composite, which enables rapid heat dissipation.

Keywords: Materials application; Materials chemistry; Materials design; Materials science.