Material properties and structure of natural graphite sheet

Abstract Natural graphite sheet (NGS) is compressible, porous, electrically and thermally conductive material that shows a potential to be used in fuel cells, flow batteries, electronics cooling systems, supercapacitors, adsorption air conditioning, and heat exchangers. We report the results of an extensive material characterization study that focuses on thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, electrical conductivity, coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), compression strain, and emissivity. All the properties are density-dependent and highly anisotropic. Increasing the compression from 100 to 1080 kPa causes the through-plane thermal and electrical conductivities to increase by up to 116% and 263%, respectively. The properties are independent of the sheet thickness. Thermal and electrical contact resistance between stacked NGS is negligible at pressures 100 to 1080 kPa. In the in-plane direction, NGS follows the Wiedemann-Franz law with Lorenz number 6.6 $$\times $$ × 10 $$^{-6}$$ - 6 W $$\Omega $$ Ω K $$^{-2}$$ - 2 . The in-plane CTE is low and negative (shrinkage with increasing temperature), while the through-plane CTE is high, increases with density, and reaches 33 $$\times $$ × 10 $$^{-6}$$ - 6 K $$^{-1}$$ - 1 . Microscope images are used to study the structure and relate it to material properties. An easy-to-use graphical summary of the forming process and NGS properties are provided in Appendices A and B.