SUMMARY:

With excellent electrical, thermal and mechanical properties as well as large specific surface area, graphene has been applied in next-generation nano-electronics, gas sensors, transparent electrical conductors, thermally conductive materials, and superior energy capacitors etc. Convenient and productive preparation of graphene is thereby especially important and strongly desired for its manifold applications.

Chemically developed functionalized graphene from graphene oxide (GO) has significantly high productivity and low cost, however, toxic chemical reduction agents (e.g. hydrazine hydrate) and raised temperature (400-1100°C) are usually necessary in GO reduction yet not preferred in current technologies. Here, microwaves (MW) are applied to reduce the amount of graphene oxide (GO) at a relatively low temperature (~165^oC). Experimental results indicate that resurgence of interconnected graphene-like domains contributes to a low sheet resistance with a high optical transparency after MW reduction, indicating the very high efficiency of MW in GO’s reduction.

Moreover, graphene is usually recumbent on solid substrates, while vertically aligned graphene architecture on solid substrate is rarely available and less studied. For TIMs, electrodes of ultracapacitors, etc, efficient heat dissipation and electrical conductance in normal direction of solid surfaces is strongly desired. In addition, large-volume heat dissipation requires a joint contribution of a large number of graphene sheets. Graphene sheets must be aligned in a large scale array in order to meet the requirements for TIM application. Here, thermally conductive fuctionalized multilayer graphene sheets (fMGs) are efficiently aligned in a large scale by vacuum filtration method at room temperature, as evidenced by SEM images and polarized Raman spectroscopy. A remarkably strong anisotropy in properties of aligned fMGs is observed. Moreover, VA-fMG TIMs are prepared by constructing a three-dimensional vertically aligned functionalized multilayer graphene architecture between contact Silicon/Silicon surfaces with pure Indium as a metallic medium. Compared with their counterpart from recumbent A-fMGs, VA-fMG TIMs have significantly higher equivalent thermal conductivity and lower contact thermal resistance.

Electrical and thermal conductivities of polymer composite are also greatly interested here. Previous researches indicated that filler loading, morphology of fillers, and chemical bonding across filler/polymer interfaces have significant influence on electrical/thermal conductivity of polymer composite. Therefore, the research also pays substantial attention to these issues. First, electrical resistivity of CPCs is highly sensitive on volume or weight ratio (filler loading) of conductive fillers in polymer matrix, especially when filler loading is close to percolation threshold (p_c). Thermal oxidation aging usually can cause a significant weight loss of polymer matrix in a CPC system, resulting in a filler loading change which can be exhibited by a prompt alteration in electrical resistivity of CPCs. Here, the phenomena are applied as approach for in-situ monitoring thermal oxidation status of polymeric materials is developed based on an electrical sensors based on conductive polymeric composites (CPCs). The study developed a model for electrical resistivity of sensors from the CPCs as a function of aging time at constant aging temperature, which is in a good agreement with a Boltzmann-Sigmoidal equation. Based on the finding, the sensors show their capability of in-situ in-situ monitor and estimate aging status of polymeric components by a fast and convenient electrical resistance measurement.

Second, interfacial issues related to these thermal conductive fillers are systemically studied. On the one hand, the study focuses on relationship between morphology of h-BN particles and thermal conductivity of their epoxy composites. It is found that spherical-agglomeration of h-BN particles can significantly enhance thermal conductivity of epoxy resin, compared with dispersed h-BN plates, by substantially reducing specific interfacial area between h-BN and epoxy resin. On the other hand, surface of high thermal conductive fillers such as SiC particles and MWNTs are successfully functionalized, which makes their surface reactive with bisphenol A diglycidyl ether and able to form chemical bonding between fillers and epoxy resin. By this means, thermal conductivity of polymer composites is found to be significantly enhanced compared with control samples, indicating the interfacial chemical bonding across interface between thermal conductive fillers and polymer matrix can promote heat dissipation in polymeric composites. The finding can benefit a development of high thermal conductive polymer composites by interfacial chemical bonding enhancement to meet the demanding requirements in current fine pitch and Cu/low k technology.