Improving thermal management of electronic apparatus with paraffin (PA)/expanded graphite (EG)/graphene (GN) composite material

This study introduced a novel PA-EG-GN composite phase change material (PCM) with better thermos-physical properties to help dissipate heat in electronic apparatus. Both the X-ray diffractometer and Fourier transformation infrared spectra patterns show that the composite PCM is the pure physical combination of no chemical interactions. Raman spectroscopy results suggest that the structural symmetry of the GN decreases with vibration increases. Results from Scanning Electron Microscopy show that GN can improve the compatibility with the mixture of PA and EG. Differential scanning calorimetry curves indicate that the composite PA-EG-GN has a lower latent heat than that of pure PA and PA-EG. The weight-loss ratios of the PA-EG and PA-EG-GN are roughly equivalent to the mass ratio of PA in the composite PCMs. The thermal conductivity of the PA-EG-GN is evidently higher than PA-EG and shows a strong linear relationship with the compress density. To verify these conclusions, an experiment was conducted to compare the thermal management capabilities of the PA-EG composites and the PA-EG-GN composites with several simulative chips. Both the surface peak temperature and the apparent heat transfer coefficient of chips were measured. The final results confirmed that the PA-EG-GN has a better performance than regular PA-EG composites.