Large-Scale Production of Electrothermal Films with GNSs/CNTs/CB Three-Dimensional Structure Ink by Screen Printing

Abstract

With the development of flexible electronic technology, there is a growing demand for electrothermal materials that are environmentally friendly, safe, low-cost, and large-scale producible for efficiently solving thermal management issues. In this study, low-cost water-based carbon series electrothermal ink is prepared by a dispersion and grinding method, and the electrothermal films with various areas can be prepared on a large scale by screen printing. Simultaneously, the three-dimensional (3D) conductive network structure of graphene nanosheets (GNSs)/multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs)/carbon black (CB) is built by the ball milling dispersion process. Due to the low percolation threshold network formed by GNSs/CNTs/CB, the prepared ink has excellent conductivity, and the square resistance (R sq ) reaches 4.3 Ω sq −1 with a thickness of 25 μm. Moreover, the saturation temperature (T s ) of the screen-printed electrothermal film (4 cm × 4 cm) can reach 165 °C with an input voltage of 10 V, and it has extremely low power consumption (444.75 cm 2 W −1 ). The electrothermal film also maintains relatively stable electrical properties in a bending test of 115 000 cycles. When the heating device (9 cm × 31 cm) is applied to the expanded polypropylene (EPP) box, the food temperature can be kept around 60 °C and the flavor can be well preserved.

Flexible Grid Graphene Electrothermal Films for Real-Time Monitoring Applications

“…Electrothermal materials convert electrical energy into thermal energy through the Joule heating effect . Traditional electrothermal materials such as metal alloys and ceramics have high thermal stability, but their complex manufacturing processes, stiffness, and high-quality density limit their mass production of flexible electrothermal films. − Carbon-based materials, such as carbon nanotubes, , carbon black, , and graphene materials, − have become the best choice for flexible electrothermal films due to their low-quality density, high thermal conductivity, and high-temperature resistance. Among them, graphene material, due to its lightweight, excellent conductivity, mechanical properties, and high electrical-thermal conversion efficiency, has become one of the best choices for electrothermal materials. − A lot of work has been done on the properties of graphene-based electrothermal films.…”

Washable and Flexible All Carbon Electrothermal Joule Heater for Electric Vehicles

“…Recently, several studies have explored carbon-based nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, graphene-based materials, and their hybrid materials for electrothermal heaters due to their excellent mechanical properties, outstanding thermal conductivity, and strong chemical stability. [13,[14][15][16][17] Nevertheless, these reported nanocomposites suffer from high power consumption, instability, and so forth. [11] Certain drawbacks in electrothermal heater performances have been overcome by compositing the carbon source with additives such as silver particles, [18] silver nanowires, [19] SiO 2 particles, [20] and tourmaline.…”

Highly Sensitive Flexible Thermal Sensors Based on a Kind of MXene/DES Inks

“…Among them, photothermal conversion materials are the most used for uncontacted temperature sensing. Traditional photothermal conversion materials such as metal nanomaterials, − carbon-based materials, black polymers, and conductive polymers − present fine capacity for thermal generation. However, there is a bottleneck to improving the photothermal conversion efficiency of these materials.…”