Highly Conductive Porous Graphene/Ceramic Composites for Heat Transfer and Thermal Energy Storage

Abstract

A novel architecture of 3D graphene growth on porous Al2O3 ceramics is proposed for thermal management using ambient pressure chemical vapor deposition. The formation mechanism of graphene is attributed to the carbothermic reduction occurring at the Al2O3 surface to initialize the nucleation and growth of graphene. The graphene films are coated on insulating anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) templates and porous Al2O3 ceramic substrates. The graphene coated AAO possesses one‐dimensional isolated graphene tubes, which can act as the media for directional thermal transport. The graphene/Al2O3 composite (G‐Al2O3) contains an interconnected macroporous graphene framework with an extremely low sheet electrical resistance down to 0.11 Ω sq−1 and thermal conductivity with 8.28 W m−1 K−1. The G‐Al2O3 provides enormous conductive pathways for electronic and heat transfer, suitable for application as heat sinks. Such a porous composite is also attractive as a highly thermally conductive reservoir to hold phase change materials (stearic acid) for thermal energy storage. This work displays the great potential of CVD direct growth of graphene on dielectric porous substrates for thermal conduction and electronic applications.

The New Graphene Family Materials: Synthesis and Applications in Oxygen Reduction Reaction

“…Usually, nickel is used as the sacrificial template and catalyst [91][92][93][94][95]. In addition, anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) [96], ZnO [97], pyrolyzed photoresist films [98] and SiO 2 [99] can be applied as the scaffold to build the 3D macroscopic structure.…”

Ion and water transport in charge-modified graphene nanopores

“…Pristine graphene has excellent thermal property [2] and remarkable electronic property, [3] which make it widely used in thermal devices, [4] and energy storage such as supercapacitors [5] and Li-ion batteries. [6] Simultaneously, monolayer graphene is extremely thin, the thickness of which can reach atom scale, but has outstanding mechanical properties.…”

Three-Dimensional Graphene Interconnected Structure, Fabrication Methods and Applications: Review

“…The pore size can also be tuned by varying two key parameters during the CVD process; time and temperature. Mingwei Zhou et al [36] prepared a nanoporous Ni substrate having a thickness of ca. 30 μm and average pore size of ca.…”