Effect of well-designed graphene heat conductive channel on the thermal conductivity of C/SiC composites

Poor thermal conductivity, especially in thickness direction, is a major obstacle to extend the service lifetime of C/SiC composite. However, there are few papers focusing on finely designing heat conductive channel but a simply introduction of various modifiers to improve C/SiC thermal conductivity, which leads to less success. Herein, multi-layer graphene sheets were utilized to improve the thermal conductivity of C/SiC composites via an effective method to design graphene heat conductive channels. To determine the role of graphene sheets in improving thermal conductivity, the effect of the different loading fractions of graphene and microstructure of as-prepared composites were systemically investigated. Results revealed that the thermal conductivity of composites increased by 204% with well-designed graphene heat conductive channels. Besides, compared with the porosity, the orderly aligned heat conductive pathways played a more important role in thermal conductivity. This work provides a new and effective method for preparing well-designed heat conductive channels to enhance thermal conductivity of C/SiC.