Large Reduction of Hot Spot Temperature in Graphene Electronic Devices with Heat-Spreading Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Scanning thermal microscopy measurements reveal a significant thermal benefit of including a high thermal conductivity hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) heat-spreading layer between graphene and either a SiO₂/Si substrate or a 100 μm thick Corning flexible Willow glass (WG) substrate. At the same power density, an 80 nm thick h-BN layer on the silicon substrate can yield a factor of 2.2 reduction of the hot spot temperature, whereas a 35 nm thick h-BN layer on the WG substrate is sufficient to obtain a factor of 4.1 reduction. The larger effect of the h-BN heat spreader on WG than on SiO₂/Si is attributed to a smaller effective heat transfer coefficient per unit area for three-dimensional heat conduction into the thick, low-thermal conductivity WG substrate than for one-dimensional heat conduction through the thin oxide layer on silicon. Consequently, the h-BN lateral heat-spreading length is much larger on WG than on SiO₂/Si, resulting in a larger degree of temperature reduction.