Highly anisotropic thermal and electrical conductivities of nylon composite papers with the integration of strength and toughness

Abstract

The mechanical properties of thermally conductive composites are the key to realize their applications. Strength of materials is of significance, furthermore the toughness of materials also should attract more concern. Actually, few researchers have reported the simultaneous improvement of strength and toughness of anisotropic thermally and electrically conductive composites. Therefore, this study aims to obviously improve the in-plane thermal and electrical conductivities of nylon composites, which display superior tensile strength and toughness, compared to other thermally conductive composites. The nylon composite papers, prepared through a facile method involving vacuum-assisted filtration and compression molding processes, present a laminate structure and compact graphene nanoplatelet (GNP) stacks inside composites. On account of the special structure, the nylon composite papers show a super-high in-plane thermal conductivity of 16.0 W m⁻¹ K⁻¹ and electrical conductivity of 18.0 S cm⁻¹ at a filler loading of 14.6 wt%. Surprisingly, the composite papers still exhibit a high strength of 48.3 MPa, which is comparable to that of a pure nylon film. In addition, the elongation at break of the composite paper with 14.6 wt% GNPs is as high as 34.2%, ultimately endowing the composite papers with a good toughness of 13.15 MJ m⁻³. The nylon composite papers successfully achieve the integration of excellent thermal and electrical conductivities, and superior strength and toughness, showing huge application values in the field of intelligent electronic device.