High-Performance Thermal Interface Material Based on Few-Layer Graphene Composite

Abstract

We developed high-performance thermal interface materials (TIMs) based on a few-layer graphene (FLG) composite, where FLG was prepared by the interlayer catalytic exfoliation (ICE) method. We experimentally demonstrated the feasibility of FLG composites as TIMs by investigating their thermal and mechanical properties and reliability. We measured the thermal interface resistance (Rint) between FLG composite TIMs (FLGTs) and copper to be 3.2 ± 1.7 and 4.3 ± 1.4 mm2 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 (κTIM) of FLGTs is increased by an enhancement factor (β) of ∼17 as the FLG concentration increases from 0 to 10 vol %. We also characterized Vickers hardness and glass transition temperature (Tg) of our FLGTs. We find that our FLGTs are thermally and mechanically reliable within practical operating temperature and pressure ranges.