High-performance polyimide nanocomposites with polydopamine-coated copper nanoparticles and nanowires for electronic applications

A multilayer-structured polyimide nanocomposite based on a combination of polydopamine (PDA)-coated copper nanoparticles (CuNPs@PDA) and copper nanowires (CuNWs@PDA) was synthesized using a flexible and rapid method. The maximum thermal conductivity of (CuNPs-CuNWs)@PDA/polyimide (PI) composite with 10 wt% filler loading was increased to 4.13 W/mK, which was an enhancement by nearly 23 times compared with the use of neat PI matrix. The relative permittivity and dielectric loss were about 4.58 and 0.022 at 1 MHz, respectively. The use of multilayer-structure facilitated increased thermal conductivity and reduced permittivity of the nanocomposite compared with CuNPs@PDA/PI and CuNWs@PDA/PI films. The highly thermal conductive nanocomposites are promising for applications in thermal management.