Characterization and reduction of thermal boundary resistance of CVD-graphene interfaces

Abstract

With development of nano-fabrication technology, feature size and dimension of microelectronics are approaching nanoscale. A phenomenon of this size-shrinking trend is that the properties of interfaces between contacting materials are becoming dominant factors affecting performance of microelectronics. Researchers have devoted countless efforts to investigate properties of materials at nanoscale, but knowledge about the interfaces is still insufficient. Graphene is considered as one of the miracle materials for next generation microelectronics due to its two-dimensional nature. The extraordinary high thermal conductivity and electron mobility of graphene attract researchers to integrate graphene into microelectronic devices. However, since graphene is just an atomic structure of one or a few atom layers, the interfaces between graphene and another kind of material strongly influence the performance of graphene based devices. This research selects thermal boundary resistance of graphene interfaces as the topic, which is very important for the thermal management in graphene microelectronics and even for the feasibility evaluation for other potential graphene applications. By the implementation of 3ω method, thermal boundary resistance, which is the basic index to evaluate thermal transport of interfaces, of several kinds of graphene interfaces is characterized, to evaluate thermal transport of the interfaces. The effects of interfacial interaction on the thermal boundary resistance are further explored. The formation of well-adhesive interfaces is of great importance to realize graphene microelectronics. On the other hand, covalent bonds between the carbon atoms of graphene and the atoms of another contacting material assist the heat transfer across interfaces.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology