Largely enhanced thermal conductivity of ethylene-propylene-diene monomer composites by addition of graphene ball

Along with the need of the fast development of electric and electronic industries, polymer composites with high thermal conductivity are much more demanded in the field of energy storage systems and electrical devices. In this paper, graphene ball (GB) composed of stacked graphene sheets was selected as filler and introduced into ethylene-propylene-diene monomer (EPDM) for improving its thermal conductivity. Here, a facile method was proposed to make GB uniformly dispersed into EPDM by solution blending and then obtain high thermal conductive EPDM/GB composites through vulcanization. The thermal conductivity of neat EPDM is 0.29 W/(m.K). The addition of the GB leads to the increase of the thermal conductivity of the composites. Thermal conductivity of the EPDM/GB composite with 60 phr GB loading along the in- and through-plane directions are 18.43 and 1.48 W/(m.K), which are approximately to 62 and 4 times higher than that of neat EPDM, respectively. The EPDM/GB composites are expected to play a key role in new-era advanced electronic devices and related applications due to its excellent thermal transport property.