Ni@rGO into nickel foam for composite polyethylene glycol and erythritol phase change materials

The exploitation of shape-stabilized composite phase change materials (CPCMs) with high solar-thermal conversion efficiency, thermal storage capacity and thermal conductivity has attractive prospects for solar energy utilization. In this work, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheets decorated with Ni nanoparticles (Ni@rGO) are successfully filled into the nickel foam (NF) skeletons by acidic graphene oxide solution impregnation and subsequent thermal reduction methods. The obtained NF/Ni@rGO supports with controllable Ni@rGO content are used as the carrier for loading polyethylene glycol (PEG) and erythritol (ET) to prepare CPCMs. The Ni@rGO hybridization enhances the interaction of the carrier framework with the PCM, which can effectively increase the PCM loading and prevent its leakage. As compared with bare NF supported CPCMs, the NF/Ni@rGO supported CPCMs have better shape stability, far higher thermal storage density, and better recyclability. The optimized CPCMs with PEG and ET show high latent enthalpies of 125.30 Jmiddotg(-1) and 280.66 Jmiddotg(-1), respectively. It is also found that the thermal conductivity of CPCMs is significantly improved to 0.9199 Wmiddotm(-1)K(-1) for NF/Ni@rGO-10/PEG and 0.9146 Wmiddotm(-1)K(-1) for NF/Ni@rGO-10/ET, which is 344 % and 35 % higher than that of PEG and ET, respectively. In addition, the decoration of Ni nanoparticles on the rGO support (i.e., NF/Ni@rGO-10) could further improve the thermal conductivity, solar-thermal conversion efficiency (95.74 %) and electro-thermal conversion efficiency (71.39 %) of CPCMs. This research furnishes the basis for the development of high performance CPCMs. Moreover, it has great potential and broad application prospects in the efficient utilization of solar energy and thermal management of electronic devices.

Automated summary

In this study, shape-stabilized composite phase change materials (CPCMs) with high solar-thermal conversion efficiency and thermal storage capacity were developed. The use of Ni@rGO nanosheets filled into nickel foam skeletons as the carrier for loading PEG and ET improved the shape stability, thermal storage density, and thermal conductivity of CPCMs. The decorated Ni nanoparticles on the rGO support further improved the thermal conductivity and conversion efficiency of CPCMs. The optimized CPCMs showed promising potential for solar energy utilization and thermal management.