Organic phase change materials confined in carbon-based materials for thermal properties enhancement: Recent advancement and challenges

Latent heat storage (LHS) using phase change materials (PCMs) is a better option than thermochemical and sensible heat storage because it can reversibly store and release large quantities of thermal energy from the surrounding environment with small temperature variation during the phase change process.

“Comparatively, LHS using phase change materials (PCMs) is considered a better option because it can reversibly store and release large quantities of thermal energy from the surrounding environment with small temperature variation during the phase change process.[ 4 , 5 ]”

Existing reviews on composite PCMs have mainly focused on thermal storage and thermal transfer enhancement, and their thermal enhancement mechanisms have mainly focused on structural level analysis and lacked microscale phonon mechanism analysis.

“Although there are some published reviews on composite PCMs,[ 4 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ] they have mainly focused on thermal storage and thermal transfer enhancement, and the corresponding thermal enhancement mechanisms have mainly focused on structural level analysis and have lacked microscale phonon mechanism analysis.[ 4 , 26 , 43 ]”

Graphene has an extremely high thermal conductivity of ≈5000 W mK−1, which is higher than that of SWCNTs.

“More importantly, as a container of PCMs, graphene has an extremely high thermal conductivity of ≈5000 W mK−1, which is even higher than that of SWCNTs.[ 4 , 67 ]”