In many applications like sensors, displays, and defoggers, there is a need for transparent and efficient heater elements produced at low cost. For this reason, we evaluated the performance of graphene-based heaters with from one to five layers of graphene on flexible and transparent polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates in terms of their electrothermal properties like heating/cooling rates and steady-state temperatures as a function of the input power density. We found that the heating/cooling rates followed an exponential time dependence with a time constant of just below 6 s for monolayer heaters. From the relationship between the steady-state temperatures and the input power density, a convective heat-transfer coefficient of 60 W·m-2·°C-1 was found, indicating a performance much better than that of many other types of heaters like metal thin-film-based heaters and carbon nanotube-based heaters.
Keywords: chemical vapor deposition (CVD); graphene; heater; heating/cooling rates; resistance; transfer.