Zahra Barani, a graduate student research assistant at the POEM Center presented at the NSF Workshop — New Frontiers of Thermal Transport in the Thermal Management symposium. Zahra’s poster was entitled Graphene Enhanced Thermal Interface Materials: Percolation Threshold and Synergistic Effects. The discovery of unique heat conduction properties of graphene and few-layer graphene motivated research of curing and non-curing composites with graphene fillers for thermal management applications. The graphene fillers in the thermal management context are the mix of single-layer and few layer graphene flakes with micrometer-scale lateral dimensions, which can be mass-produces by a variety of liquid phase exfoliation or graphene oxide reduction techniques. The NSF presentation describes a recent progress in graphene enhanced thermal interface materials, focusing on the thermal percolation threshold and the synergistic effect of combining graphene fillers with nanometer-scale metallic particles. The issues of thermal contact resistance and reliability of graphene composite as well as benchmarking graphene composites against state-of-the-art commercial thermal interface materials are also discussed. The video of the presentation is available following the link.
