Innovative Heat-Conductive Plastic Prevents Overheating of Electronics
MIE Professor Randall Erb and Daniel Braconnier, PhD’23, mechanical engineering, give insight into their research and development of a lightweight plastic-ceramic composite that can conduct heat and can be used to cool down advanced electronics.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Cyrus Moulton. Main photo: 3D printing allows a new, lightweight plastic-ceramic composite developed by Northeastern researchers to be tailored to specific shapes and sizes. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
Northeastern researchers develop breakthrough heat-conductive plastic to help prevent advanced electronics from overheating
Anyone who’s left their cellphone in a hot car knows electronics can shut down when they overheat.
Now, Northeastern researchers have developed a new, lightweight plastic-ceramic composite that conducts heat and can be used to more efficiently cool advanced electronics.”
“Managing heat is a big challenge for power electronics and devices like radar antennas,” says Northeastern professor Randall Erb, head of the university’s Directed Assembly of Particles and Suspensions (DAPS) Lab and lead researcher on the project. “When electronics overheat, you either have to slow them down or turn them off. That might be fine for a phone, but not for critical systems like radar.”
Northeastern researchers, in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, developed the material that combines ceramics, polymers and additives into a 3D-printable plastic composite. It has a unique internal structure, ordered down to the nanoscale, that lets heat move through it easily.
Plastic might sound like an odd choice for cooling.
“Plastics are normally terrible at conducting heat,” says Daniel Braconnier, a former Ph.D. student in Erb’s lab. “Adding ceramic particles helps a bit, but the plastic still slows heat flow too much.”
The breakthrough was finding a way to precisely organize the material at every scale — from molecules all the way up to the printed part. Using 3D printing, the team carefully positioned ceramic particles, then used special heating steps to grow tiny bridges of crystalline polymer between them. This connected network allows heat to travel efficiently, making the material even more thermally conductive than stainless steel, while being four times lighter.
“These properties can enable much higher performance in many systems,” Erb says.
While metal materials like stainless steel can short out electronics if they touch them, the new material is an electrical insulator. It also doesn’t block radio frequency signals, which means it won’t interfere with 5G or radar systems.
Read full story at Northeastern Global News