Metalized nanotube tips improve through thickness thermal conductivity in adhesive joints

The through-thickness thermal conductivity in conventional adhesive joints (of approximately 0.3 W/m-K) fails to meet the thermal load transfer requirement in numerous applications to enable lean manufacturing and improve system reliability to thermal load. Carbon nanotubes are known to possess extremely high thermal conductivity along the longitudinal axis. According to molecular dynamics simulations, the value can be as high as 3500 W/m-K at room temperature for multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT). Meanwhile, the transverse thermal conductivity perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the MWCNTs is known to be relatively low, approximately 10-15 W/m-K. Existing studies of mixing the MWCNTs in polymers for adhesive joints only achieved minimal enhancement in the thermal conductivity and failed to satisfy the thermal property requirement for the adhesive joints. In order to properly utilize the superior axial thermal conductivity of the MWCNTs, vertically aligned MWCNTs have been used in this study and incorporated in the adhesive joint configuration. Analytical parametric study was conducted to identify critical parameters that affect the overall thermal conductivity of the joint and to provide guidelines for the process development. The process development involved growing the vertically aligned MWCNTs on silicon wafers. The aligned nanotube array was partially infused with epoxy adhesive. Selective reactive ion etching of the epoxy revealed the nanotube tips. In order to reduce the impedance mismatch and phonon scattering at the interface between the nanotube tips and the adherends, gold was thermally evaporated on the nanotube tips. The measured thermal conductivity of the adhesive joint device incorporating the MWCNTs was 262 W/m-K, which is significantly larger compared to that of less than 1 W/m-K without the MWCNTs.