According to an article in China Science News, China’s sales of cell phones using graphene thermal conductive film such as Huawei Mate 20X were close to 29 million, and the cumulative amount of graphene film were about 1.3 million square meters in the past 12 months. With the rapid increase of 5G smartphone penetration, graphene thermal conductive film is expected to see explosive growth. In order to cope with the heat dissipation demand of high-power electronic devices, CAS Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry formed a “709 + 705” team, and successfully developed a graphene thermal conductivity sheet with high heat flux, good flexibility and other comprehensive indicators. It has built a ten-ton graphene oxide slurry and a thousand-square-meter graphene membrane pilot platform, which has been used in many satellites and has become a qualified supplier for China Aerospace Science and Technology Group and China Electric Power Group.

Graphene thermal conductive film has both high thermal conductivity (1000~1200 W/mK) and high thickness (100~300μm). In addition, its lateral heat expansion capacity is more than four times that of artificial graphite film prepared from polyimide film. It needs to be graphitized at a high temperature above 2800°C, but currently only a discontinuous production process can be used, which has high energy consumption and low production efficiency. The team has established a pilot plant for an annual production capacity of ten tons of graphene oxide, which can eventually produce 1,000 square meters of graphene film, which can be used for 22,000 cell phones, and can meet the needs of about 100 satellites. As a next step, the team will propose to build a production line with an annual capacity of 200,000 square meters of high-throughput graphene film according to market demand.

China Science News 2021-11-15 Page 3 Energy and Chemical Industry