Recycling of metal sludge wastes for thermal conductive filler via sintering and surface modification

Abstract

In this work, the waste metal sludge was used to thermal thermally conductive filler after sintering and pulverization. The thermal conductivity of a composite containing metal sludge is only 0.93 W m(-1)K(-1f) or 60 wt% of filler, which is lower than that of conventional thermally conductive composites containing ceramic fillers at the same filler weight fraction. However, the differences between the thermal conductivity values of the filler materials are reduced when compared at the same volume fraction, due to the high density of the metal filler. Moreover, the thermal conductivity values were similar after surface modification of the filler particles using a silane coupling agent. Hence, the surface modification of metal oxide particles from sludge wastes is a promising method for producing a filler material with reasonable thermal conductivity values compared to conventional ceramic fillers. In addition, this method contributes to reducing an environmental pollution and the production costs of various electronic devices. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.