Preparation of n-Hexadecane@Melamine Formaldehyde Microcapsulated Phase Change Materials Modified by Graphene Oxide With Excellent Photothermal Properties

Microencapsulated phase change materials (MPCMs) with excellent photothermal conversion performance are prepared via in situ polymerization method, whose core material and shell material are n-hexadecane and graphene oxide (GO) modified melamine formaldehyde (MF), respectively. The concern here is how the GO affects the properties of prepared microcapsules for morphology, thermal properties, and photothermal conversion. The prepared n-hexadecane@MF/GO MPCMs possess preferable sphericity and well-defined core–shell structure. The prepared MPCMs exhibit excellent thermal energy storage capacity. Adding GO can effectively improve latent heat and encapsulation efficiency. The MPCMs with 0.1 wt% GO have the best latent heat of 169.12 J g − 1 and the highest encapsulation efficiency of 74.54%. Due to the promoted optical response in visible light and near-infrared-light of GO, photothermal conversion efficiencies of modified MPCMs are obviously raised above 40%. As the GO proportion is 0.3 wt%, the modified MPCMs reache the maximum photothermal conversion efficiency of 88.04%, 64.47% higher than unmodified MPCMs.