MOF decorated boron nitride/natural rubber composites with heterostructure for thermal management application through dual passive cooling modes base on the improved thermal conductivity and water sorption-desorption process

Numerous researches have drawn on the polymer-based thermal conductive composites to cope with heat dissipation issue both in the integrated electronics and human body. However, the limited thermal conductivity and mono-cooling mode even in the high filler content are always restricted its further application. Currently, the use of latent heat from phase transition has aroused researchers’ appetite for the thermal management. Herein, inspired by the sweat modulating the body temperature, a passive dual thermal management strategy was proposed by taking advantage of high latent heat and the improved thermal conductivity, where the liquid-vapor phase transition of water inside the MOF coated on the polymer-based composites to form the heterogeneous composites. In the proof-of-concept test, the obtained MIL-101 (Cr) MOF as the sorbent owned the high specific surface area of 1850 cm3/g, cyclic water uptake of 1.18 g and phase change enthalpy of 1780 J/g, which promoted the well spontaneous adsorption and desorption ability of water. While sulfur surface modified boron nitride/natural rubber composites (BN-S/NR) exhibited the excellent anisotropic thermal conductivity (11.48 W m−1 K−1) in the through-plane direction at the filler loading of 70 wt%. After the MIL-101 (Cr) MOF coated composites (MOF-BN-S/NR) with heterogeneous structure, the composites with 0.07 g MOF possessed the pretty cooling performance and thermal stability to adjust temperature at a proper range both in electronics and human body because of the dual passive heat dissipation approach. Therefore, these findings provide the meaningful insight into research to fabricate composites with heterogeneous-assisted heat dissipation in thermal management.