Fabrication and characteristics of mesophase pitch-based graphite foams prepared using PVA-AAc solution

Abstract

Graphite foams (GFs) were prepared by adding different amounts of mesophase pitch (MP) into polyvinyl alcohol-acrylic acid (PVA-AAc) solution followed by the heat treatment. It was confirmed that the pore diameters of GFs were controlled by the slurry concentration, which was the mesophase content added in polymer solution, and their thermal conductivity and compressive strength were also controlled by porosities of GFs formed at different conditions. The resulting GFs in this study had the highest thermal conductivity of 53.414 ± 0.002 W/mK and compressive strength of 1.348 ± 0.864 MPa at 0.69 in porosity. The thermal conductivity of MP based GFs increased approximately 23 times higher than that of using isotropic pitch based GFs due to the developed graphitic structure.