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The tribological properties of the epoxy were significantly improved due to the tribological synergy of biomimetic F-CDs and sulfonated h-BN.

Thermal conductive polymer composite prepared by 3D printing technology, which has a highly vertically oriented carbon fiber structure.

A simple method was proposed to produce a flexible heat spreader with efficient thermal transportation performance.

Correction for ‘Ultrahigh thermal conductive polymer composites by the 3D printing induced vertical alignment of carbon fiber’ by Zhenbang Zhang et al., J. Mater. Chem. A, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1039/D3TA01676E.

High thermal conductivity polymer composites at low filler loading are of considerable interest because of their wide range of applications. The construction of three-dimensional (3D) interconnected networks can offer a high-efficiency increase for the thermal conductivity of polymer composites. In this work, a facile and scalable method to prepare graphene foam (GF) via sacrificial commercial polyurethane (PU) sponge templates was developed. Highly thermally conductive composites were then prepared by impregnating epoxy resin into the GF structure. An ultrahigh thermal conductivity of 8.04 W m-1 K-1 was obtained at a low graphene loading of 6.8 wt%, which corresponds to a thermal conductivity enhancement of about 4473% compared to neat epoxy. This strategy provides a facile, low-cost and scalable method to construct a 3D filler network for high-performance composites with potential to be used in advanced electronic packaging.

Thermal management materials with high thermal conductivity and good flexibility are needed for the next generation of flexible electronics. Herein, a flexible graphene/cellulose nanofiber (CNFG) composite film with high thermal conductivity was fabricated via simple vacuum-assisted filtration. The highly ordered hierarchical stacked layer structure of the graphene nanosheets endows the CNFG composite films with excellent heat-spreader performance and good flexibility. The in-plane thermal conductivity of the CNFG composite film loaded with 50 wt% graphene reached 164.7 W m−1 K−1, and the through-plane thermal conductivity reached 5.0 W m−1 K−1. More importantly, the thermal conductivities of the CNFG composite films in both the axial and radial directions barely changed after 1000 bending cycles. In addition to the good flexibility, the CNFG composite films exhibited superior mechanical properties compared to common graphene papers and neat cellulose nanofibers. The tensile strength of the CNFG composite film containing 50 wt% graphene was 72.3 ± 5.4 MPa. All these qualities make the CNFG composite films ideal heat spreaders for flexible electronic devices.

A rigid three-dimensional structure composed of silicon carbide (SiC) nanowire@graphene sheets (3DSG) was prepared using a high frequency heating process. The polyamide acid was then infused into the three-dimensional structure and imidized at 350 °C. The thermal conductivity of polyimide (PI)/3DSG composites with 11 wt% filler addition can be up to 2.63 W m−1 K−1, approximately a 10-fold enhancement when compared with the results obtained using neat PI. Furthermore, the 3DSG shows a better synergistic effect in thermal conductivity improvement, relative to a simple mixture of SiC nanowires and graphene sheets (GSs) fillers with the same additive content. The reinforced thermal properties can be attributed to the formation of efficient heat conduction pathways among GSs.