Graphite films show potential in large and small heating applications

The team at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) in Saudi Arabia also showed that graphene domains within the graphite film are key to the material’s excellent heating performance.

According to KAUST, graphitic carbon nanomaterials can be used for heat management, such as dissipating heat from microchips. The same materials could also be used as electric heaters.

“There’s a need to develop low-power, flexible heater panels, and nanocarbons are key contenders,” said G. Deokar, a postdoc in the lab of Pedro Costa, principal investigator at KAUST’s Laboratory for Carbon Nanostructures. “So far, however, their electrothermal performance has been limited.”

Nanocarbon-based heaters commonly require an input of 20-60V to reach a 250^oC target temperature. They can also degrade rapidly when heated in air.

Costa, Deokar and their colleagues recently developed a method to manufacture nanoscale-thick graphite films (NGFs) at wafer-scale. They also were able to easily transfer them to arbitrary substrates, without the residues often present in graphene panels.