Owing to the growth of demand for highly integrated electronic devices, high heat dissipation of thermal management materials is essential. Epoxy composites have been prepared with vertically aligned (VA) three-dimensional (3D)-structured SiC sheet scaffolds. The required VA-SiC sheet scaffolds were prepared by a novel approach starting with a graphene oxide (GO) scaffold. The VA-GO scaffolds were reduced to VA-graphene scaffolds in an argon environment, and the latter were subsequently transformed into VA-SiC sheet scaffolds by a template-assisted chemical vapor deposition method. Epoxy resin was filled in the empty spaces of the 3D scaffold of SiC sheets to prepare the composite mass. The material so prepared shows anisotropic thermal property with ultrahigh through-plane conductivity of 14.32 W•m −1 •K −1 at a SiC sheet content of 3.71 vol %. A thermal percolation is observed at 1.78 vol % SiC filler. The SiC sheet scaffold of covalently interconnected SiC nanoparticles plays a vital role in the formation of the thermal conductive network to significantly enhance the thermal conductivity of epoxy composites. The application of the VA-SiC/epoxy composite as an efficient thermal dissipating material has also been presented. The VA-SiC/epoxy composites have a strong potential for preparing heat-dissipating components in integrated microelectronics.

Graphene nanoplatelets are chemically crosslinked to aramid nanofibers through a phosphorus trimer to fabricate ultratough, thermoconductive, flame retardant, and EMI shielding films.

We study the dynamics of a flexible polymer under a Kramers potential using the multidimensional barrier crossing theory. The activation free energy of the polymer evaluated by a lattice statistics yields the crossing rate as a function of chain length, temperature, and potential parameters. It is found that a long chain has an enhanced crossing rate due to the extended conformation of low free energy it has at the barrier, while a short chain has the crossing dynamics of a Brownian particle. A chain of intermediate length can exhibit a minimum in the crossing rate as chain length varies. For any range of chain lengths and potential parameters, the crossing rate is larger than that of a polymer in the globular state, due to the internal degrees of freedom of the unfolded flexible chain. Our results can be applied to macromolecular separation and DNA electrophoresis.

We consider a modified energy depot model in the overdamped limit using an asymmetric energy conversion rate, which consists of linear and quadratic terms in an active particle's velocity. In order to analyze our model, we adopt a system of molecular motors on a microtubule and employ a flashing ratchet potential synchronized to a stochastic energy supply. By performing an active Brownian dynamics simulation, we investigate effects of the active force, thermal noise, external load, and energy-supply rate. Our model yields the stepping and stalling behaviors of the conventional molecular motor. The active force is found to facilitate the forwardly processive stepping motion, while the thermal noise reduces the stall force by enhancing relatively the backward stepping motion under external loads. The stall force in our model decreases as the energy-supply rate is decreased. Hence, assuming the Michaelis-Menten relation between the energy-supply rate and the ATP concentration, our model describes an ATP-dependent stall force in contrast to kinesin-1.