High-performance Thermal Interface Material Based on Few-layer Graphene Composite

TL;DR

This paper presents the development and characterization of high-performance thermal interface materials based on few-layer graphene composites, demonstrating low thermal resistance, high thermal conductivity, and mechanical reliability.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel FLG composite TIM with enhanced thermal and mechanical properties, prepared via interlayer catalytic exfoliation, and provides comprehensive experimental validation.

Findings

Thermal interface resistance as low as 3.2 mm²K/W at 5 vol.% FLG.

Thermal conductivity increased by ~17 times with FLG concentration.

FLG composites are thermally and mechanically reliable within operational ranges.

Abstract

We developed high-performance thermal interface materials (TIMs) based on few-layer graphene (FLG) composite, where FLG was prepared by the interlayer catalytic exfoliation (ICE) method. We experimentally demonstrated feasibility of FLG composites as TIMs by investigating their thermal and mechanical properties, and reliability. We measured the thermal interface resistance ($R_{int}$) between FLG composite TIMs (FLGTs) and copper and to be 3.2$\pm$1.7 and 4.3$\pm$1.4 $mm^2$K/W for 5 vol.% and 10 vol.% FLGTs at 330 K, respectively, comparable to or even lower than that of many commercial TIMs. In addition, the thermal conductivity ($\kappa_{TIM}$) of FLGTs is increased by an enhancement factor ($\beta$) of ~17 as the FLG concentration increases from 0 to 10 vol.%. We also characterized Vickers hardness and glass transition temperature ($T_g$) of our FLGTs. We find that our FLGTs are thermally and mechanically reliable within practical operating temperature and pressure ranges.