Thermal and mechanical properties study of boron nitride nanosheets decorated by silver/epoxy nanocomposites

Epoxy is widely used in mechanical and electronic industries due to its excellent adhesive properties and mechanical performances. However, the poor thermal conductivity limits its application, especially in high density equipment. In order to improve the thermal conductivity of epoxy, silver nanoparticles decorated boron nitride nano-sheets (Ag-BN) were prepared and incorporated into the epoxy matrix to obtain nanocomposites (EP-AB) in this work. The EP-AB behaves a significant enhancement of 1089% at an Ag-BN loading of 25 vol% compared to the pure epoxy. The thermogravimetric curve shows that the thermal stability of nanocomposites is improved with the addition of Ag-BN. Moreover, dynamic thermomechanical analysis reveals that Ag-BN can effectively reduce the segmental mobility of the epoxy matrix, which helps to improve the stiffness, decrease the mechanical loss, and increase the glass transition temperature of EP-AB. Those three properties gain an optimum value when the content of Ag-BN is 20 vol%. Also, the nanocomposites perform more stability in mechanical properties than pure epoxy under a varied frequency. The Cole–Cole plot of storage modulus and loss modulus shows that the pure epoxy and nanocomposites with low nanomaterial content are homogenous and the uniformity begins to decrease when the addition of Ag-BN is 20 vol%.