The Polymer Society of Korea

박민아 (인하대학교 )

심상은 (인하대학교)

Despite its widespread use in electronic packaging, the intrinsically low thermal conductivity of silica remains a major limitation for efficient heat dissipation in epoxy composites.

To address this issue, we designed a hybrid filler system composed of alumina-coated silica particles and high-aspect-ratio alumina nanowires.

In this structure, the alumina shell improves the thermal conductivity of silica particles while preserving their inherent advantages, and the alumina nanowires act as one-dimensional thermal bridges between adjacent particles to form an interconnected three-dimensional thermal network within the epoxy matrix.

The composite containing alumina-coated silica particles alone exhibited a 10% increase in thermal conductivity compared with the bare silica-filled composite, while the hybrid composite containing both alumina-coated silica particles and alumina nanowires showed a 60% increase in thermal conductivity. Cross-sectional SEM analysis directly revealed nanowire-mediated bridging between neighboring particles, supporting the proposed thermal network formation mechanism.