title: Thermally conductive, electrically insulating and melt-processable polystyrene/boron nitride nanocomposites prepared by in situ reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization.
abstract: Thermally conductive and electrically insulating polymer/boron nitride (BN) nanocomposites are highly attractive for various applications in many thermal management fields. However, so far most of the preparation methods for polymer/BN nanocomposites have usually caused difficulties in the material post processing. Here, an in situ grafting approach is designed to fabricate thermally conductive, electrically insulating and post-melt processable polystyrene (PS)/BN nanosphere (BNNS) nanocomposites by initiating styrene (St) on the surface functionalized BNNSs via reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization. The nanocomposites exhibit significantly enhanced thermal conductivity. For example, at a St/BN feeding ratio of 5:1, an enhancement ratio of 1375% is achieved in comparison with pure PS. Moreover, the dielectric properties of the nanocomposites show a desirable weak dependence on frequency, and the dielectric loss tangent of the nanocomposites remains at a very low level. More importantly, the nanocomposites can be subjected to multiple melt processing to form different shapes. Our method can become a universal approach to prepare thermally conductive, electrically insulating and melt-processable polymer nanocomposites with diverse monomers and nanofillers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Thermal Aging, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, People's Republic of China. Shenzhen Research Institute, City University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xingyi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Shen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Ke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Pingkai
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Yoshio
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bando
authors.forename: Dmitri
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Golberg
authors.forename: Chunyi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhi