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Unique antimicrobial/thermally conductive polymer composites for use in medical electronic devices
Author(s) -
Xiong SiWei,
Zhang Pan,
Xia Yu,
Zou Qian,
Jiang Mengying,
Gai JingGang
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.50113
Subject(s) - epoxy , materials science , composite material , electrical conductor , boron nitride , thermal conductivity , composite number , antimicrobial , ternary operation , thermal conduction , polymer , chemistry , organic chemistry , computer science , programming language
The common neglect of the prominent bacterial growth and accumulation on polymer‐based thermal conductive materials used in medical electronic devices will hurt the functionality and lifetime of medical devices, and sometimes even lead to medical accidents. In this study, we developed a novel ternary composite with excellent antimicrobial and thermal conductive properties to solve this problem. This composite was composed of antimicrobial functionalized hexagonal boron nitride (AB@h‐BN) nanoplatelets, low melt alloys (LMAs), and epoxy. Antimicrobial testing showed that the AB@h‐BN/LMAs/epoxy composites were 100% against both Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus ; their antibacterial mechanism was contact killing and was harmless to the environment. Besides enhancing the antimicrobial property, the AB@h‐BN nanoplatelets connected the mutually independent LMAs, forming the continuous network for heat conduction in the epoxy. Benefited from this distinctive structure, the thermal conductivity of AB@h‐BN/LMAs/epoxy can reach 2.66 Wm −1 k −1 , which represented an enhancement of about 1141% over the pure epoxy.