One-step Surface Modification for Boron Nitride and its Polymer Composite of Enhanced Thermal Conductivity for Advanced Packaging Applications

As the power density of the latest electrical and electronic devices rapidly increases, there has been strikingly high demands for novel materials of high-performance thermal management. In this study, we report a new approach to synthesis of glycine-functionalized hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), which is one of critical fillers to make high thermal conductivity encapsulants. Under high-temperature reflux conditions, it is observed glycine can directly graft onto the BN surface, introducing abundant functional groups that effectively form coherent interfaces between h-BN and polymer resins, thus enhancing thermal transfer at the interfaces between polymer and fillers. Compared to non-functionalized BN/epoxy composites and neat epoxy resin, the synthesized BN-glycine (BN@G)/epoxy composites show a 51.5% and 477.8% increase in thermal conductivity, respectively. We believe its scalability, environmental compatibility, and industrial application potential of this method well demonstrates the promising potential to design thermally conductive encapsulants or adhesives for advanced packaging such as 2.5D/3D packaging.