The enhanced thermal transport properties of a heat spreader assembled using non-covalent functionalized graphene

Though graphene paper consisting of layer-by-layer stacked graphene nanosheets (GNs) has been widely used as a heat spreader due to the high in-plane thermal conductivity, the drawback of graphene paper is that it shows low through-plane thermal conductivity at the same time. In this study, polyamine-functionalized perylene bisimide derivative (APBI)/graphene nanosheet hybrid paper (AGP) samples with a "brick-and-mortar" structure were fabricated via the noncovalent functionalization of GNs and APBI. APBI can not only greatly improve the through-plane thermal transport but it also improves the mechanical properties of AGP. The through-plane thermal conductivity of AGP reaches 6.67 W m(-1) K-1 with 42.36 wt% APBI and the tensile strength of AGP reaches 47.9 MPa with 14.22 wt% APBI. AGP, with both good thermal transport properties and mechanical properties, is expected to be used for thermal management applications as a heat spreader in industry