Dielectric composite reinforced by in-situ growth of carbon nanotubes on boron nitride nanosheets with high thermal conductivity and mechanical strength

Dielectric composites with high thermal conductivity and mechanical strength have great potential in microelectronic packaging. However, conventional composites with excellent thermal conductivity generally possess high electrical conductivity which raises short-circuit problems and unsatisfactory mechanical properties which limits their applications. In this work, dielectric composites with superior thermal and mechanical performance are obtained by fabricating a new type of fillers with three-dimensional (3D) nanostructure. Specially speaking, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are grown on the surface of boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS) by chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and then utilized as fillers in epoxy resin (BNNS/CNT/Epoxy). The thermal, mechanical and dielectric properties of as-prepared composites are investigated in details. It is shown that the cross-plane thermal conductivity enhancement of the novel composite is as high as 615% compared with the pure epoxy, higher than that of BNNS/Epoxy (380%). Meanwhile, the BNNS/CNT/Epoxy remains a high electrical resistivity of more than 1 Mohm.cm, which is important to avoid short-circuit in electronics. The tensile strength of the composite increases nearly 4 times with the increase of CVD time. These experimental results indicate that the fabricated BNNS/CNT has great potential for reinforcement of composites with wide applications.