Growth of polyaniline nanowire arrays on boron nitride microrods enables high‐efficient thermal transport

Abstract

AbstractThe rapid development of flexible conductive materials has promoted the research on conductive polymer (CP)‐based materials. However, CPs have relatively low thermal conductivity (TC), which can result in severe heat dissipation problems for device applications. In this work, core–sheath structured polyaniline@boron nitride (BN@PANI) composites were prepared by in‐situ growth strategy, in which PANI nanowire arrays were uniformly anchored to the surface of BN microrods. Thanks to the particular structure, the as‐prepared BN@PANI composite shows excellent thermal management capabilities. Specifically, the TC of the BN@PANI composite is 4.32 W/m·K at low BN loading of 10 wt%, which is almost 17.8 times that of pure PANI. Moreover, the excellent heat dissipation performance is intuitively presented through infrared imaging technology. Impressively, the PANI nanowire arrays are vertically arranged on the BN surface to form a conductive pathway, which results in conductivity comparable to pure PANI. This work broadens the ideas for preparing high‐performance CP‐based composites by using insulating fillers.Highlights Core–sheath structured BN@PANI composites were prepared by an in‐situ growth strategy. The thermal conductivity of composite was 4.32 W/m·K at 10 wt% BN loading. The introduction of BN had little effect on the conductivity of PANI. The BN@PANI composites possessed excellent thermal management capability. This work contributes to understanding heat transport in conductive polymers.