Highly thermally conductive graphene film produced using glucose under low-temperature thermal annealing

• Published in: Journal of materials science 2019-05, Vol.54 (10), p.7553-7562
• Main Authors: Li, Jing, Chen, Xu-Yang, Lei, Ru-Bai, Lai, Jin-Feng, Ma, Tong-Mei, Li, Yang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activated carbon; Annealing; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chemical Routes to Materials; Chemistry and Materials Science; Classical Mechanics; Crystallography and Scattering Methods; Electric properties; Functional groups; Glucose; Graphene; Graphite; Heat conductivity; Heat transfer; Low temperature; Manufacturing costs; Materials Science; Oxide coatings; Polymer Sciences; Production costs; Solid Mechanics; Technology application; Thermal conductivity; Thermal management
• ISSN: 0022-2461; 1573-4803
• DOI: 10.1007/s10853-019-03406-x

Graphene films have attracted much attention as a heat dissipation material due to their unique thermal transfer behavior that exceeds that the performance of graphite. However, the very high thermal annealing temperature (~ 3000 °C) required to reduce the graphene oxide (GO) films leads to high manufacturing costs and restricts its broader application in thermal management applications. In this study, a modified-graphene (m-Gr) film was fabricated by vacuum-filtering GO suspensions with added glucose, followed by thermal annealing at 1000 °C. Oxygen-containing functional groups were effectively eliminated during annealing and activated carbon atoms from the decomposition of glucose molecules repaired defects in the graphene sheets to restore large areas of the π-conjugated structure. The as-obtained m-Gr films showed excellent in-plane thermal conductivity ~ 1300 Wm −1  K −1 and much more efficient heat removal than pristine-reduced graphene oxide films. This high thermal conductivity of m-Gr films provides opportunities for their use in next-generation commercial electronics.