High thermal conductivity of hexagonal boron nitride laminates

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that laminates of hexagonal boron nitride can achieve high thermal conductivity up to 20 W/mK, which can be tuned by adjusting volumetric mass density, making them promising for thermal management applications.

Contribution

It provides the first evidence that mass-produced hexagonal boron nitride laminates can reach industrially relevant thermal conductivities.

Findings

Thermal conductivity of BN laminates reaches up to 20 W/mK.

Thermal conductivity increases with volumetric mass density.

BN laminates outperform current materials used in thermal management.

Abstract

Two-dimensional materials are characterised by a number of unique physical properties which can potentially make them useful to a wide diversity of applications. In particular, the large thermal conductivity of graphene and hexagonal boron nitride has already been acknowledged and these materials have been suggested as novel core materials for thermal management in electronics. However, it was not clear if mass produced flakes of hexagonal boron nitride would allow one to achieve an industrially-relevant value of thermal conductivity. Here we demonstrate that laminates of hexagonal boron nitride exhibit thermal conductivity of up to 20 W/mK, which is significantly larger than that currently used in thermal management. We also show that the thermal conductivity of laminates increases with the increasing volumetric mass density, which creates a way of fine-tuning its thermal properties.