Thermal management is significant to maintain the reliability and durability of electronic devices. Heat can be dissipated using thermal interface materials (TIMs) comprised of thermally conductive polymers and fillers. Furthermore, it is important to enhance the thermal conductivity of TIMs through the formation of a heat transfer pathway. This paper reports a polymer composite containing vertically aligned electrochemically exfoliated graphite (EEG). We modify the EEG via edge selective oxidation to decorate the surface with iron oxides and enhance the dispersibility of EEG in polymer resin. During the heat treatment and curing process, a magnetic field is applied to the polymer composites to align the iron oxide decorated EEG. The resulting polymer composite containing 25 wt% of filler has a remarkable thermal conductivity of 1.10 W m− 1 K− 1 after magnetic orientation. These results demonstrate that TIM can be designed with a small amount of filler by magnetic alignment to form an efficient heat transfer pathway.

    Abstract
    1 Introduction
    2 Experimental section
        2.1 Surface treatment of EEG
        2.2 Metal oxide coating on sGO
        2.3 Fabrication of polymer composite
        2.4 Characterization
    3 Results and discussion
        3.1 Edge selective oxidation of the electrochemically exfoliated graphite
        3.2 Decoration of the sGO surface with iron oxide nanoparticles for the magnetic-responsive surface
        3.3 Thermal conductivity of the polymer composite with magnetically aligned msGO
    4 Conclusions
    Acknowledgements 
    References

• Jeong Heon Ryu(Advanced Nanohybrids Laboratory, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Education and Research Center for Smart Energy and Materials, Inha University)
• Seo Mi Yang(Advanced Nanohybrids Laboratory, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Education and Research Center for Smart Energy and Materials, Inha University)
• Jea Uk Lee(Department of Advanced Materials Engineering for Information and Electronics, Kyung Hee University)
• Jae Ho Kim(Advanced Nanohybrids Laboratory, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Education and Research Center for Smart Energy and Materials, Inha University)
• Seung Jae Yang(Advanced Nanohybrids Laboratory, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Education and Research Center for Smart Energy and Materials, Inha University)