Thermal Reliability Study of Polymer Bonded Carbon Nanotube Array Thermal Interface Materials

Following Moores law, the development of electronics has led to an exponential increase of transistor density over the last couple of decades. Unfortunately, this trend also gives an increased heat power density in active components. Thermal interface materials (TIMs) are used to decrease the thermal resistance in thermal packages by filling out air gaps that naturally form there. TIMs are at the same time identified as a bottleneck due to their relatively low thermal conductivity. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are proposed as a future material for TIMs due to their high thermal conductivity and conformable nature. However, no reliability studies for CNT array TIMs can be found in literature that would demonstrate how these types of interfaces would perform. This is to the authors best knowledge the first reported study on thermal reliability for a CNT array TIM, which will be an important step towards a market realisation.