Highly thermally conductive polymer-based composites have attracted extensive attention as thermal management materials to remove the accumulated heat in the field of heat conduction. However, the highly thermally conductive polymer composites prepared by traditional methods often result in insufficient enhancement in thermal conductivity and poor mechanical properties. In this work, a unique 3D interconnected Cu network was successfully fabricated to enhance the thermal transfer properties of epoxy composites. Taking the 3D structure and good electrical and mechanical properties of carbon felt (CFelt) into consideration, we chose CFelt as the skeleton to electroplate Cu on the CFelt surface for constructing the 3D interconnected Cu network. The highly thermally conductive epoxy composites were then prepared by impregnating epoxy resin into the 3D Cu-plated CFelt (Cu-CFelt) skeleton and curing. Taking advantage of the 3D interconnected Cu heat transfer channel, an ultrahigh thermal conductivity of 30.69 W m-1 K-1 was achieved, which exhibited nearly 140 times higher than that of pure epoxy (0.22 W m-1 K-1) and 110 times higher than that of CFelt/epoxy composite (0.28 W m-1 K-1). And our composite exhibited outstanding thermal behaviors during heating and cooling processes. Moreover, the obtained composite maintained good flexural strength of 104.79 MPa and presented superior electrical conductivity of 7.49 × 104 S cm-1. These attractive properties demonstrate that our composites have strong application prospects in high-performance thermal management materials.

A 3D interconnected Cu network supported by carbon felt skeleton for highly thermally conductive epoxy composites

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.