Synthesis and characterization of nitrogen-doped graphene nanosheets/copper composite film for thermal dissipation

In this study, we propose a simple and cost-effective process to assemble composite film for thermal dissipation by combination of nitrogen-doped graphene nanosheets (N-GNS) and copper foil. We found that both nitrogen-doping contents and types of nitrogen bonding in GNS play important roles on heat dissipation performance. XPS results indicate that about 1.1-2.8 mol. % nitrogen atoms were successfully doped in GNS. The Raman analyses future confirm that D/G ratio could be efficiently reduced from 0.17 to 0.1 by N-doped healing process. For heat dissipation tests, we use both thermocouple measurement between two points and thermographic camera to distinguish performance of these samples. Laser flash analysis shows that the thermal conductivity (K) could be enhanced from 333.53 W/m K of Cu foil to 445.91 W/m K of GNS/Cu by GNS coating process. Furthermore, the thermal conductivity of N-GNS/Cu could approach to 542.9 W/m K, leading to 163% increase of thermal conductivity compared to the copper foil. These findings open up the thermal dissipation performance of our N-GNS/Cu composite film was superior to copper foil via nitrogen doping technique.

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