Highly Thermally Conductive Fluorinated Graphene Films with Superior Electrical Insulation and Mechanical Flexibility.

Abstract

Graphene-based heat-spreading films have captured high attention in academic study and commercial applications because of their extremely high thermal conductivity and desired flexibility. However, the electrical conductivity limits their utilizations in many electronic fields. Herein, to address this problem, fluorinated graphene (F-graphene) that is exfoliated from commercial fluorinated graphite was first used to prepare the flexible free-standing composite film via vacuum filtration of uniform poly(vinyl alcohol)-assisted F-graphene suspension. The well-organized alignment of F-graphene lamellas makes the composite film show an ultrahigh in-plane thermal conductivity of 61.3 W m-1 K-1 at 93 wt % F-graphene. Despite at such high filler loading, the fabricated F-graphene film still possesses a superior electrical insulation property. Therefore, these results suggest that F-graphene, as the novel thermally conductive filler, demonstrates fascinating characters in the preparation of a thermally conductive yet electrically insulating nanocomposite.