High oriented graphite film with high thermal conductivity prepared by pure polyimide film formed with catalyst pyridine

Abstract Highly oriented graphitized films demonstrate outstanding thermal conductivity in recent telecommunication applications. In this work, polyimide films were prepared with catalyst pyridine. High orientated and high thermal conductive graphite films were successfully prepared by pure polyimide (PI) films without any other carbon source inducing growth. The result showed that pyridine could promote the imidization of PI. Suitable dosages of pyridine can improve the crystallinity, promote the orderly arrangement of molecular chains, and facilitate the growth of the crystal lattice after graphitization. After graphitization, graphitized PI films exhibited highly oriented layers. The graphitized film coming from a pyridine concentration of 3.5 wt% provided the best thermal conductivity (1092 W / ( m . K ) ), which was 49 times more than those from the thermally imidized films. The average crystalline size of it was 62.16 nm and its degree of graphitization was 90%. Therefore, the graphite film prepared by polyimide formed with catalyst pyridine has the potential of thermal management and is a highly prospective candidate as heat dissipation substrates for miniaturization electronic devices.