Extremely high thermal conductivity of nanodiamond-polydopamine/thin-layer graphene composite films

Abstract The hybrid composite films containing nanodiamonds (ND) coated with polydopamine (pDA) (ND-pDA) and reduced graphene oxide (rGO) converted from graphene oxide (GO) films are designed for achieving extremely high thermal conductivity. The ND-pDA/rGO films are successfully fabricated using the vacuum-filtration process followed by a heat treatment at 800 °C. The thermal conductivities of the films in the in-plane (K//) and through-plane (K⊥) directions are measured by the laser flash method to better understand how the addition of dopamine, the amount of ND-pDA, and the test temperature affect the thermal properties of the hybrid films. The experimental results show that the addition of dopamine results in dense structure of the ND-pDA/rGO hybrid films, which is favorable for phonon transport, and thus remarkably increase the thermal properties of the film. Additionally, films with higher ND-pDA loading possess lower in-plane but higher through-plane thermal conductivity. K// and K⊥ of 1406 and 0.677 W m−1 K−1, respectively, for 20ND-pDA/20rGO measured at 25 °C are achieved. Both the K// and K⊥ of 20ND-pDA/20rGO increase with test temperature. Maintaining such high thermal conductivities at high temperature, the hybrid films are believed to be suitable for lightweight thermal management materials with high heat transfer properties in a specific direction.