Development of Silver Nanoparticles Enriched N-Dodecanoic Acid as Energy Storage Material for Thermal Management of Electronic Systems

Phase change materials (PCMs) with metal nanoparticles have gained significant attention due to the limitation of pure PCMs possessing low thermal conductivity in various applications like electronics, electrical, and thermal devices. In order to overcome these limitations, metal nanoparticles, mainly which possess enhanced thermal conductivity, have sparked considerable interest in dispersing the nanoparticles into PCM. This study focuses primarily on developing nanoparticles-based advanced energy storage material for the thermal management and cooling of electronic systems. To achieve this, thermally conductive silver (Ag) nanoparticles enriched n-dodecanoic acid (SeDA) PCM were prepared with a certain mass fraction of Ag nanoparticles embedded into the PCM using the sol-gel synthesis. The morphology and crystalline structure of the as-synthesized silver nanoparticles were analyzed by FESEM and XRD, respectively, resulting in the highly crystalline particle size ranging from 20 nm to 100 nm. The impact of enriching silver (Ag) nanoparticles into n-dodecanoic acid revealed a noticeable increase in thermal conductivity and swift nucleation kinetics when compared to the pure PCM. Besides, the SeDA PCM exhibited a high heat storage capacity of 194.5 J/g, which is relatively good in terms of regulating the temperature and heat retrieval rate of the electronic systems. Furthermore, the FTIR and the TGA results have confirmed the chemical stability and thermal stability of the Ag-enriched PCM on a long-term basis. These attributes of SeDA PCM are considered to be favorable for the thermal management of electronic systems.