Thermally-enhanced flexible phase change materials incorporating magnetically aligned boron nitride platelets for efficient thermal management

Flexible phase change materials (FPCMs) have attracted enormous attention owing to their exceptional latent heat storage capacity, flexibility, and processability for the thermal management of flexible electronics. However, the commonly low thermal conductivity, leakage issue, and inadequate mechanism strength restrict their further practical application. In this work, thermally-enhanced FPCMs incorporating magnetically aligned boron nitride (BN) platelets were synthesized under the magnetic field. Among them, silicone elastomer (SE) and n-Octadecane were utilized as the flexible matrix and thermal energy storage materials, respectively. The thermal conductivity of the FPCMs was significantly improved from 0.183 W/m·°C to 0.513 W/m·°C with the incorporation of 8 wt% BN, which is about 47.5 % higher than that of the FPCMs with randomly distributed BN platelets. In addition, the latent heats of the synthesized FPCMs were over than 60 J/g, demonstrating a sufficient thermal energy storage capacity. Further, the FPCMs displayed exceptional flexibility and heat dissipation performance, being promising for applications in the field of flexible electronic thermal management.