Starfish surface-inspired graphene-copper metaparticles for ultrahigh vertical thermal conductivity of carbon fiber composite

Carbon fiber reinforced composites (CFRCs) have received increasing interest for their unique feature of excellent strength-to-weight ratio and their applicability in various fields from aerospace and automobile to electronics. Here, we report an unprecedented effective fabrication strategy to construct an extremely thermally conductive, mechanically robust, and highly durable CFRC on the basis of creation of vertical heat dissipation network using the starfish surface-inspired graphene-copper metaparticles. A new type of thermally conductive composite with a very low content of metaparticles is achieved by the simple spray coating and subsequent high-temperature compression of multi-scaled graphene and copper particles. It is experimentally demonstrated that the vertical thermal diffusion of peculiar metaparticles with starfish surface-like structure, in which multiple bundles of graphenes exist as protrusions on the surface of copper plate, affords a vertical heat dissipation network via interlayer contact between large-sized copper components of metaparticles. As a consequence, this simple approach provides ultrahigh vertical thermal conductivity and excellent mechanical strength, as well as a high heat durability for the composite. An unprecedented vertical thermal conductivity with 520% enhancement, which is the highest vertical heat transfer performance achieved so far, and remarkable vertical thermal diffusivity with 643% improvement are accomplished by our method.