Improvement of Heat Transfer Properties through TiO2 Nanosphere Monolayer Embedded Polymers as Thermal Interface Materials

Abstract

A thermal interface material (TIM) is a substance that reduces the thermal resistance between a heat source and heat sink, which facilitates heat conduction towards the outside. In this study, a TiO2 nanosphere (NS)-filler based TIM was fabricated via facile processes such as spin-coating and icing methods. Thermal conductivity of the fabricated TiO2 NS-based TIM was enhanced by increasing the loading contents of the TiO2 NS-filler and successfully cooling down the GPU chipset temperature from 62 °C to 50 °C. Moreover, the TIM with the TiO2 NS-monolayer additionally lowered the GPU temperature by 1–7 °C. The COMSOL simulation results show that the TiO2 NS-monolayer, which was in contact with the heat source, boosts the heat transfer characteristics from the heat source toward the inside of the TIM. The suggested metal oxide monolayer-based TIM is an effective structure that reduces the temperature of the device without an additional filler loading, and it is expected to have a wide range of applications for the thermal management of advanced devices.