Synergistic effects of various ceramic fillers on thermally conductive polyimide composite films and their model predictions

In this study, thermally conductive composite films were fabricated using an anisotropic boron nitride (BN) and hybrid filler system mixed with spherical aluminum nitride (AlN) or aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃) particles in a polyimide matrix. The hybrid system yielded a decrease in the through-plane thermal conductivity, however an increase in the in-plane thermal conductivity of the BN composite, resulting from the horizontal alignment and anisotropy of BN. The behavior of the in-plane thermal conductivity was theoretically treated using the Lewis-Nielsen and modified Lewis-Nielsen theoretical prediction models. A single-filler system using BN exhibited a relatively good fit with the theoretical model. Moreover, a hybrid system was developed based on two-population approaches, the additive and multiplicative. This development represented the first ever implementation of two different ceramic conducting fillers. The multiplicative-approach model yielded overestimated thermal conductivity values, whereas the additive approach exhibited better agreement for the prediction of the thermal conductivity of a binary-filler system.