Multiscale Modeling on the Enhanced Heat Transfer Behavior of Thermal Interface Materials Based on Graphene

Y Wang, IEEE 71ST ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS AND TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE (ECTC 2021), 2171-2177 (2021).

DOI: 10.1109/ECTC32696.2021.00341

Thermal interface material (TIM) is a component frequently used for achieving more efficient heat transfer in the packaging of modern microsystems, such as integrated circuits, micro-electro-mechanical systems, and photonic devices. TIMs applied in the microsystem packages today are typically made of polymeric matrices such as epoxy dispersed with fillers such as silver, which has high thermal conductivity. Graphene is an allotrope of carbon synthesized and characterized by scientists since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Based on experimental and theoretical research, it has been revealed that graphene possesses the highest thermal conductivity among the known materials till now. Therefore, dispersing graphene fillers in polymeric metrics has been attempted to yield more efficient TIMs for applications in microsystem packaging. However, according to the experimental research to date, the heat transfer performance achieved on polymer- graphene TIMs is not as anticipated. It is established that the significant thermal boundary resistance across the interface between polymeric metrices and graphene fillers makes a big contribution to the suppressed heat transfer performance of the polymer-graphene TIMs. In this work, multiscale modeling and simulations have been established to investigate the heat transfer performance of TIMs composed of epoxy matrix and graphene fillers. Firstly, by employing molecular dynamics simulations, the introduction of molecular interposers at the epoxy- graphene interface is explored as a solution to enhance the epoxy- graphene interfacial heat transfer. It is revealed that the epoxy- graphene thermal boundary resistance could be significantly reduced by the introduction of molecular interposers. Secondly, the influence of molecular interposers on the heat transfer performance of epoxy-graphene TIMs is evaluated based on calculations using the effective media theory. A great improvement on the heat transfer performance of epoxy- graphene TIMs is discovered when molecular interposers are introduced. Lastly, by using finite element analysis, the response speed of a temperature sensor packaged by epoxy-graphene TIM is studied. Based on transient thermal solution results, it is demonstrated that the temperature sensing response speed of the temperature sensor can be made much faster, when molecular interposers are introduced to the epoxy- graphene interface.

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