Issue 14, 2018

High-quality graphene aerogels for thermally conductive phase change composites with excellent shape stability

Abstract

Low thermal conductivity and poor shape stability have seriously limited the wide application of phase change materials (PCMs). To enhance the thermal conductivity without compromising the latent heat of fusion of PCMs, high-quality graphene aerogels (HGAs) with both a highly conductive network and high porosity are fabricated on the basis of highly processable graphene oxide (GO) pastes. Freeze-drying of the GO pastes fixes their shapes and endows the resultant GO aerogels with high porosity, and high-temperature annealing of the GO aerogels at 2800 °C efficiently removes the oxygen-containing groups of the GO component and heals its defects to get HGAs with high thermally conductive capacity. Due to the interconnecting network with high porosity constructed by the high-quality graphene sheets, the resulting HGAs are highly efficient in improving the thermal conductivity of PCMs at a low graphene loading. After impregnating the porous HGA with 1-octadecanol, the obtained composite with only ∼5.0 wt% of graphene exhibits a satisfactory shape stability, an exceptional thermal conductivity of ∼4.28 W m−1 K−1 that is 18-fold higher than that of neat 1-octadecanol, and a high latent heat of fusion of ∼225.3 J g−1. Such a high performance phase change composite with an excellent shape stability would be very promising for thermal energy storage applications as latent heat storage/release units.

Graphical abstract: High-quality graphene aerogels for thermally conductive phase change composites with excellent shape stability

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
03 Jan 2018
Accepted
28 Feb 2018
First published
28 Feb 2018

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2018,6, 5880-5886

High-quality graphene aerogels for thermally conductive phase change composites with excellent shape stability

J. Yang, X. Li, S. Han, R. Yang, P. Min and Z. Yu, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2018, 6, 5880 DOI: 10.1039/C8TA00078F

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements