Highly Thermally Conductive and Structurally Ultra-Stable Graphitic Films with Seamless Heterointerfaces for Extreme Thermal Management
Peijuan Zhang, Yuanyuan Hao, Hang Shi, Jiahao Lu, Yingjun Liu, Xin Ming, Ya Wang, Wenzhang Fang, Yuxing Xia, Yance Chen, Peng Li, Ziqiu Wang, Qingyun Su, Weidong Lv, Ji Zhou, Ying Zhang, Haiwen Lai, Weiwei Gao, Zhen Xu, Chao Gao
Abstract
Abstract Highly thermally conductive graphitic film (GF) materials have become a competitive solution for the thermal management of high-power electronic devices. However, their catastrophic structural failure under extreme alternating thermal/cold shock poses a significant challenge to reliability and safety. Here, we present the first investigation into the structural failure mechanism of GF during cyclic liquid nitrogen shocks (LNS), which reveals a bubbling process characterized by “permeation-diffusion-deformation” phenomenon. To overcome this long-standing structural weakness, a novel metal-nanoarmor strategy is proposed to construct a Cu-modified graphitic film (GF@Cu) with seamless heterointerface. This well-designed interface ensures superior structural stability for GF@Cu after hundreds of LNS cycles from 77 to 300 K. Moreover, GF@Cu maintains high thermal conductivity up to 1088 W m −1 K −1 with degradation of less than 5% even after 150 LNS cycles, superior to that of pure GF (50% degradation). Our work not only offers an opportunity to improve the robustness of graphitic films by the rational structural design but also facilitates the applications of thermally conductive carbon-based materials for future extreme thermal management in complex aerospace electronics.