Opto-Electronic Advances (Jul 2024)

Paving continuous heat dissipation pathways for quantum dots in polymer with orange-inspired radially aligned UHMWPE fibers

  • Xuan Yang,
  • Xinfeng Zhang,
  • Tianxu Zhang,
  • Linyi Xiang,
  • Bin Xie,
  • Xiaobing Luo

DOI
https://doi.org/10.29026/oea.2024.240036
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 7
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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Thermal management of nanoscale quantum dots (QDs) in light-emitting devices is a long-lasting challenge. The existing heat transfer reinforcement solutions for QDs-polymer composite mainly rely on thermal-conductive fillers. However, this strategy failed to deliver the QDs’ heat generation across a long distance, and the accumulated heat still causes considerable temperature rise of QDs-polymer composite, which eventually menaces the performance and reliability of light-emitting devices. Inspired by the radially aligned fruit fibers in oranges, we proposed to eliminate this heat dissipation challenge by establishing long-range ordered heat transfer pathways within the QDs-polymer composite. Ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene fibers (UPEF) were radially aligned throughout the polymer matrix, thus facilitating massive efficient heat dissipation of the QDs. Under a UPEF filling fraction of 24.46 vol%, the in-plane thermal conductivity of QDs-radially aligned UPEF composite (QDs-RAPE) could reach 10.45 W m−1 K−1, which is the highest value of QDs-polymer composite reported so far. As a proof of concept, the QDs’ working temperature can be reduced by 342.5 °C when illuminated by a highly concentrated laser diode (LD) under driving current of 1000 mA, thus improving their optical performance. This work may pave a new way for next generation high-power QDs lighting applications.

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