Utilizing ammonium persulfate assisted expansion to fabricate flexible expanded graphite films with excellent thermal conductivity by introducing wrinkles

Abstract

Traditional expanded graphite (EG) films exhibit excellent electric and thermal conductivities, due to weak oxidation degree induced low defect density. However, the stiff sheet structure makes EG films very brittle, which greatly limits its applications in next generation flexible electric devices. To overcome this challenge, ammonium persulfate ((NH4)2S2O8) is employed as both expansion agent and weak oxidation agent. As a result, the weak oxidation can effectively reduce the surface energy mismatching between EG and water, making it possible for EG to be exfoliated in water by high-speed shearing combined with sonication. Most particularly, the expansion step introduces plenty of wrinkles into the EG sheets, which notably improve the flexibility of EG films. Besides, using raw graphite with large lateral size and less (NH4)2S2O8 can greatly improve the final overall performances. The prepared EG films exhibit good electric and thermal conductivities of 2977 S/cm, 854 W/mK, respectively. 33.1 dB EMI shielding property is obtained with the film thickness of only 10 μm. Moreover, 800 times direct bending can be overcome without any structure break. This facial large scale and environmentally friendly method endows the films with great potential applications in flexible electric devices.