Reduction of Device Operating Temperatures with Graphene-Filled Thermal Interface Materials

Jacob S Lewis

doi:10.3390/c7030053

Abstract

The majority of research into few layer graphene (FLG) thermal interface materials (TIM) concerns the direct quantification of innate composite properties with much less direct analysis of these materials in realistic applications. In this study, equilibrium temperatures of engineered device substitutes fixed to passive heat sink solutions with varying FLG concentration TIMs are experimentally measured at varying heat dissipation rates. A custom, precisely-controlled heat source’s temperature is continually measured to determine equilibrium temperature at a particular heat dissipation. It is found that altering the used FLG TIM concentrations from 0 vol.% to as little as 7.3 vol.% resulted in a decrease of combined TIM and passively-cooled heat sink thermal resistance from 4.23∘C/W to 2.93∘C/W, amounting to a reduction in operating temperature of ≈108∘C down to ≈85∘C at a heat dissipation rate of 20 W. The results confirm FLG TIMs’ promising use in the application of device heat dissipation in a novel, controllable experimental technique.

Highlights

Graphene-Filled Thermal InterfaceThe continual progress of semiconductor electronics technology very often comes at the cost of increased power consumption levels to be dissipated as waste heat [1]
Industry mitigates the problem of extremely thermally insulating air gaps with the introduction of a thermal interface material (TIM) in the junction to take the space of air [10]
Curing polymers are often used to encapsulate heat-producing chips to protect them from environmental contaminants, resulting in an unintentional thermal insulation. Polymers used in these two applications— the former—are often filled with conductive particles such as silver, copper, Al2 O3, AlN, boron nitride, ZnO, diamond, graphite, carbon nanotubes, and randomly oriented few-layer graphene (FLG) [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]

Summary

Introduction

Graphene-Filled Thermal InterfaceThe continual progress of semiconductor electronics technology very often comes at the cost of increased power consumption levels to be dissipated as waste heat [1]. The most common strategy to address device waste heat, due to its relative ease compared to improving device efficiency, is to manage the operating temperature of electronic devices by dissipating generated thermal energy into the environment as as possible. Curing polymers are often used to encapsulate heat-producing chips to protect them from environmental contaminants, resulting in an unintentional thermal insulation Polymers used in these two applications— the former—are often filled with conductive particles such as silver, copper, Al2 O3 , AlN, boron nitride, ZnO, diamond, graphite, carbon nanotubes, and randomly oriented few-layer graphene (FLG) [11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. Though these polymer materials remain substantially superior in thermal conduction than the air that they replace, there exists substantial room for improvement in these materials considering they have typically

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