Core–Shell Engineered Fillers Overcome the Electrical-Thermal Conductance Trade-Off

Abstract

The rapid development of modern electronic devices increasingly requires thermal management materials with controllable electrical properties, ranging from conductive and dielectric to insulating, to meet the needs of diverse applications. However, highly thermally conductive materials usually have a high electrical conductivity. Intrinsically highly thermally conductive, but electrically insulating materials are still limited to a few kinds of materials. To overcome the electrical-thermal conductance trade-off, here, we report a facile Pechini-based method to prepare multiple core (metal)/shell (metal oxide) engineered fillers, such as aluminum-oxide-coated and beryllium-oxide-coated Ag microspheres. In contrast to the previous in situ growth method which mainly focused on small-sized spheres with specific coating materials, our method combined with ultrafast joule heating treatment is more versatile and robust for varied-sized, especially large-sized core–shell fillers. Through size compounding, the as-synthesized core–shell-filled epoxy composites exhibit high isotropic thermal conductivity (∼3.8 W m^–1 K^–1) while maintaining high electrical resistivity (∼10¹² Ω cm) and good flowability, showing better heat dissipation properties than commercial thermally conductive packaging materials. The successful preparation of these core–shell fillers endows thermally conductive composites with controlled electrical properties for emerging electronic package applications, as demonstrated in circuit board and battery thermal management.