Characteristics of a high compressive strength graphite foam prepared from pitches using a PVA–AAc solution

Abstract

A facile method applied for preparing high-compressive-strength graphite foams in which pitch was added to a PVA–AAc (polyvinyl alcohol–acrylic acid) solution. Various amounts of pitch were added to a polymer solution to control the pore sizes and apparent densities of resulting foams. The pore size of graphite foam was reduced by increasing the slurry concentration, and its apparent density ranged from 0.12 to 0.61g/cm3. The graphite foam prepared using a hydrogel template had a high-compressive-strength of 7.90±1.02MPa and a thermal conductivity of 5.17±0.02W/mK. The proposed method was applied successfully for high-compressive-strength graphite foams.