Thermal Conductance of Copper–Graphene Interface: A Molecular Simulation

Abstract

Copper is often used as a heat-dissipating material due to its high thermal conductivity. In order to improve its heat dissipation performance, one of the feasible methods is to compound copper with appropriate reinforcing phases. With excellent thermal properties, graphene has become an ideal reinforcing phase and displays great application prospects in metal matrix composites. However, systematic theoretical research is lacking on the thermal conductivity of the copper–graphene interface and associated affecting factors. Molecular dynamics simulation was used to simulate the interfacial thermal conductivity of copper/graphene composites, and the effects of graphene layer number, atomic structure, matrix length, and graphene vacancy rate on thermal boundary conductance (TBC) were investigated. The results show that TBC decreases with an increase in graphene layers and converges when the number of graphene layers is above five. The atomic structure of the copper matrix affects the TBC, which achieves the highest value with the (011) plane at the interface. The length of the copper matrix has little effect on the TBC. As the vacancy rate is between 0 and 4%, TBC increases with the vacancy rate. Our results present insights for future thermal management optimization based on copper matrix composites.