Lightweight, superelastic yet thermoconductive boron nitride nanocomposite aerogel for thermal energy regulation

© 2019 American Chemical Society. Conventional three-dimensional (3D) thermal conductors or heat sinks are normally bulky solids with high density, which is cumbersome and not portable to satisfy current demands for soft and flexible electronic devices. To address this issue, here, a lightweight, superelastic yet thermally conductive boron nitride (BN) nanocomposite aerogel is designed by a facile freeze-drying method. The attained aerogel constituting of tailored interconnected binary inorganic-organic network structure exhibits low bulk density (6.5 mg cm-3) and outstanding mechanical performances for compression, clotting, and stretching. Meanwhile, the aerogel has promising thermal stability and high thermal conductivity over wide temperature ranges (30-300 °C), validating the application even in extremely hot environments. Moreover, the aerogel can serve as a lightweight and elastic heat conductor for the enhancement of thermal energy harvest. Interestingly, during alternate strain loading/unloading under heating, the superelasticity and the anisotropy of thermal conductive transduction make the aerogel enable the elastic thermal energy capture and dynamic regulation. Therefore, our findings provide a potential use for the thermally conductive aerogel in future green energy applications.