Super hard materials supplier Carbodeon (Vantaa / Finland; www.carbodeon.com) has developed a thermal filler using nanodiamonds that is claimed to increase the conductivity of thermally conductive polymers, without affecting the electrical insulation or other mechanical properties. The development provides significant performance increases for polymers used in electronics and LED manufacture, the company said.

In the development of the filler, the company modified a PA 6.6 reference material containing 45% by weight of boron nitride as the thermal filler through reducing the boron nitride content to 44.9% and including 0.1% of its “uDiamond” nanodiamond powder. The thermal conductivity of the PA 6.6 increased by 25% percent, averaged across all planes, the company said.

Vesa Myllymäki, Carbodeon chief technical officer, said that the performance improvements achieved by the filler derive from the extremely high thermal conductivity of diamond. “The key development made by Carbodeon is to tune the surface chemistry of the diamond particles and mixing process to develop a nano-composite in which the diamond is very well interfaced to the polymer molecules,” he added.