Improved Thermal Properties of Three-Dimensional Graphene Network Filled Polymer Composites

This paper presents the improved thermal property of three-dimensional (3D) graphene network modified polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composites. It shows that with a 2\ua0wt.% loading of graphene foams (GF), the thermal conductivity of GF/PDMS composite was successfully increased from 0.19\ua0W/mK to 0.42\ua0W/mK, which is 2.2 times higher than that of neat PDMS. However, if GF was transformed into graphene sheets (GS) by sonication, the thermal conductivity of GS/PDMS was decreased to 0.28\ua0W/mK. The remarkable improvement of the thermal properties is attributed to the 3D interconnected graphene network in GF, which form continuous heat transfer networks. Furthermore, the finite element analysis was conducted to evaluate the effect of GFs in composites, where some parameters such as thickness and thermal conductivity were analyzed and discussed. Our results indicate that the continuous 3D GFs holds great potential as fillers to improve the thermal property of polymer materials