High thermal conductivity, mesophase pitch-derived carbon foam

A relatively simple technique for fabricating mesophase pitch-based carbon foam has been developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This technique produces graphitic foam with an open cell structure and an extremely high bulk thermal conductivity, >100 W/m·K. The cell walls have a highly aligned graphitic structure, similar to high-performance carbon fibers, exhibiting interlayer spacing (d₀₀₂) of 0.336 nm, coherence length (L_a,100) of 203 nm, and a stacking height (L_c,002) of 442 nm. Consequently, the foam cell walls (struts) exhibit a thermal conductivity between 700 and 1,200 W/m·K. Because of the low density (ρ) of 0.5 g/cm³, the specific thermal conductivity of the foam is more than four times greater than that of copper.