Graphene was recently proposed as a material for heat removal owing to its extremely high thermal conductivity. We simulated heat propagation in silicon-on-insulator circuits with and without graphene lateral heat spreaders. Numerical solutions of the heat propagation equations were obtained using the finite element method. The analysis was focused on the prototype silicon-on-insulator circuits with the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors. It was found that the incorporation of graphene or few-layer graphene layers with proper heat sinks can substantially lower the temperature of the localized hot spots. The maximum temperature in the transistor channels was studied as function of graphenes thermal conductivity and the thickness of the few-layer-graphene. The developed model and obtained results are important for the design of graphene heat spreaders and interconnects.
We design a class of spatially inhomogeneous heat spreaders in the context of steady-state thermal conduction leading to spatially uniform thermal fields across a large convective surface. Each spreader has a funnel-shaped design, either in the form of a trapezoidal prism or truncated cone, and is forced by a thermal source at its base. We employ transformation-based techniques, commonly used to study metamaterials, to determine the require thermal conductivity for the spreaders. The obtained materials, although strongly anisotropic and inhomogeneous, can be accurately approximated by assembling isotropic, homogeneous layers, rendering them realisable. An alternative approach is then considered for the conical and trapezoidal spreaders by dividing them into two or three isotropic, homogeneous components respectively. We refer to these simple configurations as neutral layers. All designs are validated numerically. Such novel designs pave the way for future materials that can manipulate and control the flow of heat, helping to solve traditional heat transfer problems such as controlling the temperature of an object and energy harvesting.
The increase in the temperature of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells affects negatively their power conversion efficiency and decreases their lifetime. The negative effects are particularly pronounced in concentrator solar cells. Therefore, it is crucial to limit the PV cell temperature by effectively removing the excess heat. Conventional thermal phase change materials (PCMs) and thermal interface materials (TIMs) do not possess the thermal conductivity values sufficient for thermal management of the next generation of PV cells. In this paper, we report the results of investigation of the increased efficiency of PV cells with the use of graphene-enhanced TIMs. Graphene reveals the highest values of the intrinsic thermal conductivity. It was also shown that the thermal conductivity of composites can be increased via utilization of graphene fillers. We prepared TIMs with up to 6% of graphene designed specifically for PV cell application. The solar cells were tested using the solar simulation module. It was found that the drop in the output voltage of the solar panel under two-sun concentrated illumination can be reduced from 19% to 6% when graphene-enhanced TIMs are used. The proposed method can recover up to 75% of the power loss in solar cells.
We report on heat conduction properties of thermal interface materials with self-aligning magnetic grapheme fillers. Graphene enhanced nano-composites were synthesized by an inexpensive and scalable technique based on liquid-phase exfoliation. Functionalization of graphene and few-layer-graphene flakes with Fe3O4 nanoparticles allowed us to align the fillers in an external magnetic field during dispersion of the thermal paste to the connecting surfaces. The filler alignment results in a strong increase of the apparent thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity through the layer of nano-composite inserted between two metallic surfaces. The self-aligning magnetic grapheme fillers improve heat conduction in composites with both curing and non-curing matrix materials. The thermal conductivity enhancement with the oriented fillers is a factor of two larger than that with the random fillers even at the low ~1 wt. % of graphene loading. The real-life testing with computer chips demonstrated the temperature rise decrease by as much as 10oC with use of the non-curing thermal interface material with ~1 wt. % of the oriented fillers. Our proof-of-concept experiments suggest that the thermal interface materials with functionalized graphene and few-layer-graphene fillers, which can be oriented during the composite application to the surfaces, can lead to a new method of thermal management of advanced electronics.
The extremely high thermal conductivity of graphene has received great attention both in experiments and calculations. Obviously, new feature in thermal properties is of primary importance for application of graphene-based materials in thermal management in nanoscale. Here, we studied the thermal conductivity of graphene helicoid, a newly reported graphene-related nanostructure, using molecular dynamics simulation. Interestingly, in contrast to the converged cross-plane thermal conductivity in multi-layer graphene, axial thermal conductivity of graphene helicoid keeps increasing with thickness with a power law scaling relationship, which is a consequence of the divergent in-plane thermal conductivity of two-dimensional graphene. Moreover, the large overlap between adjacent layers in graphene helicoid also promotes higher thermal conductivity than multi-layer graphene. Furthermore, in the small strain regime (< 10%), compressive strain can effectively increase the thermal conductivity of graphene helicoid, while in the ultra large strain regime (~100% to 500%), tensile strain does not decrease the heat current, unlike that in generic solid-state materials. Our results reveal that the divergence in thermal conductivity, associated with the anomalous strain dependence and the unique structural flexibility, make graphene helicoid a new platform for studying fascinating phenomena of key relevance to the scientific understanding and technological applications of graphene-related materials.
we have fabricated transparent electronic devices based on graphene materials with thickness down to one single atomic layer by the transfer printing method. The resulting printed graphene devices retain high field effect mobility and have low contact resistance. The results show that the transfer printing method is capable of high-quality transfer of graphene materials from silicon dioxide substrates, and the method thus will have wide applications in manipulating and delivering graphene materials to desired substrate and device geometries. Since the method is purely additive, it exposes graphene (or other functional materials) to no chemical preparation or lithographic steps, providing greater experimental control over device environment for reproducibility and for studies of fundamental transport mechanisms. Finally, the transport properties of the graphene devices on the PET substrate demonstrate the non-universality of minimum conductivity and the incompleteness of the current transport theory.