A novel thermal acoustic device based on vertical graphene film

Graphene is an excellent thermoacoustic material due to its small heat capacity per unit area. However, there is obvious thermal leakage from the substrate which lower the sound emission efficiency. Here, in order to improve the efficiency, vertical graphene has been used as thermoacoustic device. In this paper, the high-quality vertical graphene was prepared by the MPCVD method, and the height of the vertical graphene was about 3.4 μm. Then a thermoacoustic device was fabricated based on vertical graphene. Compared to graphene, the unique structure of vertical graphene makes the device less area to substrate with less thermal leakage and can produce a higher sound pressure level (SPL) per unit area under the same height, the SPL value can reach as high as 60 dB at a measure distance of 0.3 cm with input power of 1.2W. This sound device based on vertical graphene is potential to be used in a wide range of applications.