In this study, we report a facile approach to fabricate epoxy composite incorporated with silicon carbide nanowires (SiC NWs). The thermal conductivity of epoxy/SiC NWs composites was thoroughly investigated. The thermal conductivity of epoxy/SiC NWs composites with 3.0 wt% filler reached 0.449 Wm⁻¹ K⁻¹, approximately a 106% enhancement as compared to neat epoxy. In contrast, the same mass fraction of silicon carbide micron particles (SiC MPs) incorporated into epoxy matrix showed less improvement on thermal conduction properties. This is attributed to the formation of effective heat conduction pathways among SiC NWs as well as a strong interaction between the nanowires and epoxy matrix. In addition, the thermal properties of epoxy/SiC NWs composites were also improved. These results demonstrate that we developed a novel approach to enhance the thermal conductivity of the polymer composites which meet the requirement for the rapid development of the electronic devices.

This work has considered the intrinsic influence of bond energy on the macroscopic, thermodynamic, and mechanical properties of crystalline materials. A general criterion is proposed to evaluate the properties of nanocrystalline materials. The interrelation between the thermodynamic and mechanical properties of nanomaterials is presented and the relationship between the variation of these properties and the size of the nanomaterials is explained. The results of our work agree well with thermodynamics, molecular dynamics simulations, and experimental results. This method is of significance in investigating the size effects of nanomaterials and provides a new approach for studying their thermodynamic and mechanical properties.

A novel two-dimensional (2D) carbon material composed of decagonal pores, and hexagonal and quadrilateral carbon rings (DHQ-graphene) is predicted by first-principles calculations. The results show that this metastable phase material displays anisotropic mechanical properties, and its in-plane Young's modulus is comparable with that of penta-graphene. DHQ-graphene is a metallic carbon material with a much higher electronic density of states of around 0.193 eV per states per atom. Equally importantly, it is also found that the most favorable adsorption site is the bridge site in the edge shared by the six- and ten-membered rings of DHQ-graphene, which has a stronger adsorption energy for oxygen (−0.27 eV) with dispersion correction (DFT-D3). The charge transfer from a DHQ-graphene sheet to an O atom amounts to 0.834|e|, 3.35% higher than that of perfect graphene. This implies that DHQ-graphene should have a good ability to adsorb oxygen with an easily controlled adsorption structure. Interestingly, it may conceivably be synthesized by a bottom-up approach from the carbon skeleton of naphthalene (C₁₀H₈). In addition, a 3D stacked structure of this material has also been investigated. This work provides a novel strategy for constructing a corrosion-resistant material by designing a 2D structure based on high-order carbon rings.