Colossal conductivity anisotropy in 3D metallic carbon films

GKW Koon and KZ Donato and A Carvalho and AD Bugallo and E Strupiechonski and RK Donato and AHC Neto, CARBON, 228, 119316 (2024).

DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2024.119316

Harnessing the phenomena of quantum coherence and destructive interference, we have successfully engineered and synthesized a three- dimensional (3D) graphene-based film exhibiting remarkable properties, including metallic thermal conductivity (kappa approximate to 150 Wm-1K-1) and electrical conductivity (sigma approximate to 320 kSm-1) at room temperature. Notably, these films demonstrate colossal transport anisotropies, reaching approximately 103 for thermal and 105 for electrical conductivity. This places them among the conducting materials with the highest anisotropies known to date, surpassing even the performance of one-dimensional (1D) carbon nanotubes and two-dimensional (2D) materials like h-BN and MoS2. These films are synthesized by self- assembly and crosslinking of edge-hydrolyzed graphene flakes. The electron transport between flakes is phonon mediated and at low temperatures the films present quantum critical behavior of a metal to Anderson insulator transition. We measure the electron transport properties in a Hall bar geometry and extract the critical exponents as a function of the sample mobility.

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