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Co-enhancement of thermal conduction and radiation through morphologies controlling of graphene functional layer for chip thermal management

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Abstract

With the continuous advancements in electronics towards downsizing and integration, efficient thermal dissipation from chips has emerged as a critical factor affecting their lifespan and operational efficiency. The fan-less chip cooling system has two critical interfaces for thermal transport, which are the contact interface between the base and the chip dominated by thermal conduction, and the surface of the fins dominated by thermal radiation. The different thermal transfer modes of these two critical interfaces pose different requirements for thermal management materials. In the study, a novel approach was proposed by developing graphene thermal transport functional material whose morphology could be intentionally designed via reformed plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) methods to meet the diverse requirements of heat transfer properties. Specifically, graphene with multilevel branching structure of vertical graphene (BVG) was fabricated through the hydrogen-assisted PECVD (H2-PECVD) strategy, which contributed a high emissivity of ∼ 0.98. BVG was deposited on the fins’ surface and functioned as the radiation enhanced layer to facilitate the rapid radiation of heat from the heat sinks into the surrounding air. Meanwhile, the well-oriented vertical graphene (OVG) was successfully prepared through the vertical electric field-assisted PECVD process (EF-PECVD), which showed a high directional thermal conductivity of ∼ 53.5 W·m−1·K−1. OVG was deposited on the contact interface and functioned as the thermal conduction enhanced layer, allowing for the quick transmission of heat from the chip to the heat sink. Utilizing this design concept, the two critical interfaces in the chip cooling system can be jointly enhanced, resulting in a remarkable cooling efficiency enhancement of ∼ 30.7%, demonstrating that this novel material possessed enormous potential for enhancing the performance of cooling systems. Therefore, this research not only provided new design concepts for the cooling system of electronic devices but also opened up new avenues for the application of graphene materials in thermal management.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52272032, T2188101, and 52021006) and the Beijing Nova Program of Science and Technology (No. 20220484079).

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Author notes

  1. Shuting Cheng, Kun Wang, and Shichen Xu contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, College of Science, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, 102249, China

    Shuting Cheng

  2. Centre for Nanochemistry, Beijing Science and Engineering Centre for Nanocarbons, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Kun Wang, Shichen Xu, Yi Cheng, Ruojuan Liu, Kewen Huang, Hao Yuan, Wenjuan Li, Yuyao Yang, Fushun Liang, Fan Yang, Mengxiong Liu & Zhongfan Liu

  3. Beijing Graphene Institute (BGI), Beijing, 100095, China

    Shuting Cheng, Ruojuan Liu, Hao Yuan, Wenjuan Li, Yuyao Yang, Fushun Liang, Fan Yang, Kangyi Zheng, Zhiwei Liang, Ce Tu, Mengxiong Liu, Xiaomin Yang, Jingnan Wang, Xuzhao Gai, Yuejie Zhao, Yue Qi & Zhongfan Liu

  4. College of Energy, Soochow Institute for Energy and Materials Innovations (SIEMIS), Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory for Advanced Carbon Materials and Wearable Energy Technologies, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215006, China

    Kangyi Zheng

  5. Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Materials Engineering, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing, 100048, China

    Xiaobai Wang

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  1. Shuting Cheng
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  2. Kun Wang
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xiaobai Wang, Yue Qi or Zhongfan Liu.

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Co-enhancement of thermal conduction and radiation through morphologies controlling of graphene functional layer for chip thermal management

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Cheng, S., Wang, K., Xu, S. et al. Co-enhancement of thermal conduction and radiation through morphologies controlling of graphene functional layer for chip thermal management. Nano Res. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-024-6540-6

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