Surface Modification Using Polydopamine-Coated Liquid Metal Nanocapsules for Improving Performance of Graphene Paper-Based Thermal Interface Materials

Jingyao Gao; Qingwei Yan; Xue Tan; Le Lv; Jufeng Ying; Xiaoxuan Zhang; Minghui Yang; Shiyu Du; Qiuping Wei; Chen Xue; He Li; Jinhong Yu; Cheng-Te Lin; Wen Dai; Nan Jiang

doi:10.3390/nano11051236

Surface Modification Using Polydopamine-Coated Liquid Metal Nanocapsules for Improving Performance of Graphene Paper-Based Thermal Interface Materials

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2021 May 7;11(5):1236. doi: 10.3390/nano11051236.

Authors

Jingyao Gao^{1

2}, Qingwei Yan^{1

3}, Xue Tan^{1

2}, Le Lv^{1

2}, Jufeng Ying^{1

2}, Xiaoxuan Zhang^{1

2}, Minghui Yang⁴, Shiyu Du⁵, Qiuping Wei⁶, Chen Xue^{1

2}, He Li^{1

2}, Jinhong Yu^{1

2}, Cheng-Te Lin^{1

2}, Wen Dai^{1

2}, Nan Jiang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Marine Materials and Related Technologies, Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Marine Materials and Protective Technologies, Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo 315201, China.
² Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
³ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China.
⁴ Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo 315201, China.
⁵ Engineering Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials, Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo 315201, China.
⁶ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China.

Abstract

Given the thermal management problem aroused by increasing power densities of electronic components in the system, graphene-based papers have raised considerable interest for applications as thermal interface materials (TIMs) to solve interfacial heat transfer issues. Significant research efforts have focused on enhancing the through-plane thermal conductivity of graphene paper; however, for practical thermal management applications, reducing the thermal contact resistance between graphene paper and the mating surface is also a challenge to be addressed. Here, a strategy aimed at reducing the thermal contact resistance between graphene paper and the mating surface to realize enhanced heat dissipation was demonstrated. For this, graphene paper was decorated with polydopamine EGaIn nanocapsules using a facile dip-coating process. In practical TIM application, there was a decrease in the thermal contact resistance between the TIMs and mating surface after decoration (from 46 to 15 K mm² W^-1), which enabled the decorated paper to realize a 26% enhancement of cooling efficiency compared with the case without decoration. This demonstrated that this method is a promising route to enhance the heat dissipation capacity of graphene-based TIMs for practical electronic cooling applications.

Keywords: graphene paper; liquid metal; surface modification; thermal contact resistance; thermal interface materials.