Photo- and electro-responsive phase change materials based on highly anisotropic microcrystalline cellulose/graphene nanoplatelet structure

Phase change materials (PCMs) exhibit great potential applications in many fields, such as energy-saving building, solar energy harvesting, waste heat utilization, constant temperature protection and thermal management of microelectronic devices. In this work, we proposed a facile and novel method to prepare the composite PCMs. Through the combination of pre-refrigeration and freeze-drying techniques using the microcrystalline cellulose (MCC)/graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) hydrogels, which were firstly prepared through solution compounding, gelling and solvent exchanging successively, the porous MCC/GNP aerogels with highly oriented stacking of MCC/GNP were successfully obtained. The composite PCMs based on the highly anisotropic MCC/GNP aerogel and polyethylene glycol (PEG) exhibited relatively high thermal conductivity (1.03 W/mK) at low GNP content (1.51 wt%), high latent heat (182.6 J/g) which was 99.84% of pure PEG, excellent encapsulation ability and mechanical stability. Further results showed that the composite PCMs exhibited excellent solar energy harvesting/electrical energy transformation, storage and release abilities. In addition, a simple heating device was designed to verify the application of the composite PCMs as the temperature protection element. The measurements showed that the presence of the PCMs prevented the rapidly rising of temperature during the heating process while maintained the temperature at relatively high level in a long time during the cooling process.