Foam structured graphene film with ultralow interfacial thermal resistance for liquid cooling thermal management

Liquid cooling technology has emerged as a promising solution for the heat dissipation of high-power electronics due to its high efficiency and compact design. However, the commonly used silicone-based thermal interface materials (TIMs) have a high compressive modulus and are prone to hardening or deformation in fluorinated electronic liquid, which leads to an increase in interfacial thermal resistance, severely impacting liquid cooling efficiency. Herein, inspired by foam structure, a 3D interconnected porous graphene films (FSGF) is constructed by mold-assisted wet spinning method, which exhibits an extremely low thermal resistance (4.2 K mm 2 W −1 ) that is about several orders of magnitude lower than those of commercial thermal greases, gels, adhesives and pads (>25 K mm 2 W −1 ). In the cold plate liquid cooling performance test, the cooling efficiency of the FSGF was nearly 2-fold higher than that of commercial silicon-based TIMs, and it has long-term reliability in electronic fluorinated liquid. This research demonstrates scalable manufacturing of high-performance pure inorganic carbon-based TIMs that holds great promise for advanced liquid cooling thermal management.