Natural Deep Eutectic Solvent‐Assisted Construction of Silk Nanofibrils/Boron Nitride Nanosheets Membranes with Enhanced Heat‐Dissipating Efficiency

Abstract

Abstract Natural polymer‐derived nanofibrils have gained significant interest in diverse fields. However, production of bio‐nanofibrils with the hierarchical structures such as fibrillar structures and crystalline features remains a great challenge. Herein, an all‐natural strategy for simple, green, and scalable top‐down exfoliation silk nanofibrils (SNFs) in novel renewable deep eutectic solvent (DES) composed by amino acids and D‐sorbitol is innovatively developed. The DES‐exfoliated SNFs with a controllable fibrillar structures and intact crystalline features, novelty preserving the hierarchical structure of natural silk fibers. Owing to the amphiphilic nature, the DES‐exfoliated SNFs show excellent capacity of assisting the exfoliation of several 2D‐layered materials, i.e., h‐BN, MoS2, and WS2. More importantly, the SNFs‐assisted dispersion of BNNSs with a concentration of 59.3% can be employed to construct SNFs/BNNSs nanocomposite membranes with excellent mechanical properties (tensile strength of 416.7 MPa, tensile modulus of 3.86 GPa and toughness of 1295.4 KJ·m−3) and thermal conductivity (in‐plane thermal conductivity coefficient of 3.84 W·m−1·K−1), enabling it to possess superior cooling efficiency compared with the commercial silicone pad.

Keywords

• boron nitride nanosheets
• deep eutectic solvents
• hybrid nanocomposite membranes
• silk nanofibrils
• thermal conductivity