Highly-efficient thermal management of electronic devices enabled by boron nitride-incorporated phase change material gels

The problem of heat dissipation has become a key to maintain the operation state and extending the service time of electronic components. Developing effective thermal management materials and technologies is of great significance to solve this problem. Previously, passive cooling using phase change materials (PCMs) has been proposed as a thermal management method for electronic devices. In this work, a hybrid thermal management system coupling the heat storage of PCMs and the thermal conduction of high conductivity materials is designed toward thermal management of electronic devices. Specifically, ternary composite gels consisting of eicosane, styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS) and boron nitride (BN) are fabricated by liquid-phase blending and sol–gel transition toward the highly efficient thermal management of electronic devices. The van der Waals force between SEBS and eicosane and the π–π interaction between SEBS and BN enable the excellent form-stability of the ternary composite gels. Taking advantage of the merits of the functional components, the proposed ternary composite gels demonstrate a high thermal energy storage capacity of 157.5 Jg−1 and high thermal conductivity of 1.08 Wm−1 K−1. The ternary composite gels are applied in the thermal management of CPU and chip to reduce their working temperature via the synergistic effect of heat dissipation and heat storage. It is anticipated that the ternary composite gels create a state of the art alternative for the next-generation flexible and multifunctional thermal management devices.