Highly Thermal Conductive and Electrically Insulating Epoxy Composites Based on Zinc-Oxide-Coated Silver Nanowires

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this manuscript, the authors prepared AgNW@ZnO/EP conductive composites and tested their thermal conductivity and electrical insulation. The manuscript is overall well-written, I have some minor suggestions.

1. More references can be added.

(1) For example, in section 2.3, the authors mentioned that "There exist many methods to synthesize nano-ZnO in the literature, which include solid-phase reaction, hydrothermal process, precipitation technique, chemical vapor deposition, electrolysis, and magnetron sputtering." I suggest the authors to add a reference for each method mentioned. 

(2) In addition, I suggest the authors to also add some references regarding the commonly used methods for the preparation of composite materials. For example, solution based self-assembly "Hybrid conjugated polymer/magnetic nanoparticle composite nanofibers through cooperative non-covalent interactions." Nanoscale Advances 2.6 (2020): 2462-2470.; Sol-gel method: "Improving piezoelectric properties of PVDF fibers by compositing with BaTiO3-Ag particles prepared by sol-gel method and photochemical reaction." Journal of Alloys and Compounds 883 (2021): 160810.

2. Please specify the crystal structure of the synthesized Ag NW.

3. The size of ZnO nanoparticle in the current study is about 5-25 nm, can the authors comment on how the size of the nanoparticle would affect the properties of the composites? 

4. The Figure 6 captain has a typo: Figure 6 (a) and (b) are SEM photos of epoxy resin composite filled with AgNW; (b) and (c) are SEM photos of epoxy resin composite filled with AgNW@ZnO; Should (c) and (d) be the photos of epoxy resin composite filled with AgNW@ZnO instead of (b) and (c)?

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper describes highly thermal conductive and electrically insulating epoxy composites using nanofillers with high thermal conductivity.  The authors deposited nano-ZnO particles on the surface of silver nanowires (AgNWs) by precipitation method and they added the obtained AgNW@ZnO filler to epoxy resin to improve the thermal conductivity of the composites.  The authors proposed a new filler with core-shell structure.  Especially, they found that combination of AgNW with ZnO (less thermal conductive than AgNW) resulted in increase of thermal conductivity.  I think the experiments were carefully done and the results are reliable.  The results of this paper will give useful information in the field of thermal interface materials for electronic components.  I would like to accept this manuscript in Polymers.

 

May I have some comments.

 

- Figure 7 shows that thermal conductivity increases with filler content.  I am just curious what will happen if the authors add more filler above 9 wt%.

- There is Chinese term in Table 2 (product ?)

- Caption of Table 2 should be revised (GO?).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf