Development of polymethylmethacrylate/reduced graphene oxide composite films as thermal interface materials

Abstract

With the miniaturization and integration of electronics into more powerful but smaller functional devices, major challenges arise. One of them is to efficiently dissipate the significant amount of thermal energy produced by these electronic devices. This requires interface materials with good thermal management properties. Reduced graphene oxide has attracted a lot of interest in this area due to its good thermal conductivity, similar with those of pristine graphene. In this work, polymethylmethacrylate/reduced graphene oxide (PMMA/RGO) composite thin films have been generated by drop casting mixtures of PMMA solutions and RGO suspensions, all prepared in N,N‐dimethylformamide (DMF) solvent. Raman, SEM and AFM investigations confirmed that homogenous PMMA/RGO composite thin films have been obtained, with RGO being uniformly distributed in the blending. Further measurements demonstrated that the thermal conductivity of RGO/PMMA composites increased with the concentration of RGO in the polymeric mixture: for the highest RGO content, the thermal conductivity increased by 210%, with no important modifications of electrical resistivity. These results are very promising for the development of new thermal interface materials based on PMMA/RGO composites to be used, for instance, in automotive industry.

Self-Assembly of Block Copolymers in Thin Films Swollen-Rich in Solvent Vapors

“…Depending on the chemical structure of monomers, the resulting polymer molecules can exhibit a variety of properties ranging from simple plastic [2][3][4] to biological [5,6], piezoelectric [7,8], thermoelectric [9,10], magnetic [11,12], or optoelectronic [13][14][15][16] functions, just to name a few. Therefore, it is not surprising at all that polymers are being used in an increasing number of applications across many multidisciplinary fields [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Nonetheless, to maximize the utility of polymers and to precisely tune and control their functions and properties, one needs to control the resulting microstructure at multiple length scales, stretching from the micrometer scale down to the nanometer scale, as there is a clear correlation between the structural arrangements of polymer molecules and their various properties [6,16,[25][26][27].…”

Crystallization of Poly(ethylene oxide)-Based Triblock Copolymers in Films Swollen-Rich in Solvent Vapors

“…The wide diversity of polymeric properties has its first source in the nature of polymers' soft material component units named monomers [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. The capability of long polymer chains to adopt, after specific processing conditions, a multitude of conformational arrangements at multiple length scales, represents a second consistent source that nourishes the development of new and/or enhanced polymer properties in thin films and on various surfaces of interest, in solutions and in the solid state [2,9,[12][13][14][15][16].…”

“…The capability of long polymer chains to adopt, after specific processing conditions, a multitude of conformational arrangements at multiple length scales, represents a second consistent source that nourishes the development of new and/or enhanced polymer properties in thin films and on various surfaces of interest, in solutions and in the solid state [2,9,[12][13][14][15][16]. Obviously, the optimized polymer properties can be advantageously employed to design and produce various functional devices, develop new technologies, and engineer high-impact applications [7,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27].…”