Highly thermally conductive layered polymer composite from solvent-exfoliated pristine graphene

Highly thermally conductive polymer composites are urgently required to resolve the heat dissipation issue of rapidly evolving electronic devices. Owing to two-dimensional plane structure and extremely high thermal conductivity, graphene is an ideal thermally conductive filler for polymer composites. In view of the increasing maturity of solvent exfoliation technique and its ability to produce high-quality graphene on a large scale at low cost, we aim to develop highly thermally conductive polymer composites from solvent-exfoliated, plane defect-free graphene, instead of oxidation-exfoliated, plane defect-rich graphene. Solvent-exfoliated pristine graphene/poly(vinylidene fluoride) composites with well-ordered layered structure are produced through a simple, scalable doctor-blading process. The combination of high-quality solvent-exfoliated pristine graphene and well-ordered layered microstructure forms high-efficiency, directional and dense pathways for phonon transport, and thus endows the polymer composites with high thermal conductivities (41.64 W/mK), surpassing the previously reported oxidation-exfoliated graphene-based polymer composites (2.1-19.5 W/mK). It provides a new route to fabricate highly thermally conductive composites from solvent-exfoliated pristine graphene. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.