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Journal of Advanced Ceramics 2022, 11(3): 403-413 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40145-021-0542-6
Research Article | Open Access | Issue | Published: 11 February 2022

Continuous SiC skeleton reinforced highly oriented graphite flake composites with high strength and specific thermal conductivity

Show Author's Information Xiaoyu ZHANGa,†,  Wenqi XIEa,†,  Lan SUNa,  Zhilei WEIa,  Zhejian ZHANGa,  Yuanyuan ZHUa,  Jiabin HUa,  Shenghe WANGb,  Zhongqi SHIa( )
State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
State Grid Anhui Electric Power Co., Ltd., Hefei 230061, China

† Xiaoyu Zhang and Wenqi Xie contributed equally to this work.

Keywords:
flexural strength, ceramics, composite materials, heat conduction, high orientation
Cite this article:
ZHANG X, XIE W, SUN L, et al. Continuous SiC skeleton reinforced highly oriented graphite flake composites with high strength and specific thermal conductivity. Journal of Advanced Ceramics, 2022, 11(3): 403-413. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40145-021-0542-6
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Highly oriented graphite-based composites have attracted great attention because of their high thermal conductivity (TC), but the low mechanical properties caused by the inhomogeneous distribution and discontinuity of reinforcements restrict the wide applications. Herein, continuous SiC ceramic skeleton reinforced highly oriented graphite flake (SiC/GF) composites were successfully prepared by combining vacuum filtration and spark plasma sintering. The effect of SiC concentration on the microstructure, flexural strength, and thermophysical properties of the composites was investigated. The GF grains in the composites exhibited high orientation with a Lotgering factor of > 88% when the SiC concentration was ≤ 30 wt%, and the SiC skeleton became continuous with the SiC concentration reaching 20 wt%. The formation of continuous SiC skeleton improved the flexural strength of the composites effectively while keeping the TC in a high level. Especially, the composites with 30 wt% SiC exhibited the flexural strength up to 105 MPa, and the specific TC reaching 0.118 W·m2·K-1·kg-1. The composites with excellent flexural strength and thermophysical properties showed significant promise for thermal management applications.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Continuous SiC skeleton reinforced highly oriented graphite flake composites with high strength and specific thermal conductivity

Show Author's information Xiaoyu ZHANGa,†, Wenqi XIEa,†, Lan SUNa, Zhilei WEIa, Zhejian ZHANGa, Yuanyuan ZHUa, Jiabin HUa, Shenghe WANGb, Zhongqi SHIa( )
State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
State Grid Anhui Electric Power Co., Ltd., Hefei 230061, China

† Xiaoyu Zhang and Wenqi Xie contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

Highly oriented graphite-based composites have attracted great attention because of their high thermal conductivity (TC), but the low mechanical properties caused by the inhomogeneous distribution and discontinuity of reinforcements restrict the wide applications. Herein, continuous SiC ceramic skeleton reinforced highly oriented graphite flake (SiC/GF) composites were successfully prepared by combining vacuum filtration and spark plasma sintering. The effect of SiC concentration on the microstructure, flexural strength, and thermophysical properties of the composites was investigated. The GF grains in the composites exhibited high orientation with a Lotgering factor of > 88% when the SiC concentration was ≤ 30 wt%, and the SiC skeleton became continuous with the SiC concentration reaching 20 wt%. The formation of continuous SiC skeleton improved the flexural strength of the composites effectively while keeping the TC in a high level. Especially, the composites with 30 wt% SiC exhibited the flexural strength up to 105 MPa, and the specific TC reaching 0.118 W·m2·K-1·kg-1. The composites with excellent flexural strength and thermophysical properties showed significant promise for thermal management applications.

Keywords: flexural strength, ceramics, composite materials, heat conduction, high orientation

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Publication history

Received: 06 July 2021
Revised: 28 September 2021
Accepted: 01 October 2021
Published: 11 February 2022
Issue date: March 2022

Copyright

© The Author(s) 2021.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51872222 and 92163112), the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFB0310400), the Shaanxi Innovation Capacity Support Program (No. 2018TD-031), and the Research on Multi-Chip Parallel Current Sharing Technology of Power Electronic Devices Based on Electric-Thermal Optimization (No. SGAH0000KJJS1900437).

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