Best practice graphene manufacturing - Highly thermally conductive graphene

Purpose and goal

The purpose of this project is to develop simple, scalable and cost-effective techniques to fabricate graphene-polymer composites that can provide high thermal conductivity over 20 W/m K and obtain generic and comprehensive knowledge about the effects of various processing conditions on the thermal conductivity.

Expected results and effects

In practice, we have developed a simple solvent exchange technique to produce high-loading graphene-polymer composites with high thermal conductivity up to 115 W/m K. A systematic study indicates the critical factors that dominate the thermal conductivity of graphene-polymer composites are the graphene loading and annealing temperature. This generic knowledge, together with the demonstrated high thermal conductivity of the graphene-polymer composites, should be very useful for thermal management in many industry applications.

Planned approach and implementation

This project was based on the collaboration between three research groups at KTH and SaltX Technology AB. The Materials Physics group at KTH investigated through simulations the minimum graphene loading needed for high thermal conductivity. The Polymer Technology group at KTH suggested compatible polymers for high-loading graphene inks. The Printed Electronics fabricated the graphene-polymer composites, measured the thermal conductivity and conducted the systematic studies. SaltX developed a new annealing technique and provided advice for the thermal conductivity test.