Environment-adaptive, anti-fatigue thermal interface graphene foam

Abstract

The rapid development of high-power and high-frequency devices in electronics leads to the urgent demands for advanced thermal interface materials (TIMs) with both superior thermal conductivity and excellent structural stability. Many attempts have exploited the silicone-based TIMs with higher thermal conductive fillers, however, their structural stability remains challenging in some extreme conditions. Here we fabricate the carbon-based graphene foam roll (GFR) as flexible TIM by hydroplastic foaming (HPF) and interface strengthening methods. The enhanced interface bonding within GFR by impregnation of graphene oxide (GO) enables its superior structural integrity. It can keep mechanical stability after 10,000 cycles at a compressive strain of 60% and sustain high temperature up to 500 °C, which has never been realized in previous reports. We demonstrate the GFR-TIM not only achieves very high structural stability but also exhibits higher thermal conductivity (∼17.42 W/mK) than most commercial TIMs (5–10 W/mK). The GFR-TIM can serve as an efficient heat-dissipation component for the CPU and shows superior cooling efficiency compared to commercial TIMs. Our work provides an advanced graphene-based TIM with excellent environment-adaptive and anti-fatigue properties, broadening their application in extreme environments, such as hypersonic vehicles, high-throughput satellites and high-power radar systems.