Oriented Electrospun Carbon Nanofibers For Improved Through-Plane Thermal Conductivity

As electronic products continue to be miniaturized, the generated heat of the running chip accumulated significantly, thus heat dissipation becomes a crucial issue. According to the previous report, reducing the interface thermal resistance (ITR) and constructing the thermal conductive networking structure can effectively improve the heat transferring property of the polymer based thermal interface materials (TIMs). Here we report a polymer composite loaded with oriented carbon nanofibers which exhibit both high thermal conductivity and excellent flexibility. These nanofibers were prepared by electrospinning technique followed by a high-temperature carbonization process. The obtained well-ordered filler structure not only reduces the ITR but also build the 3D network architecture. Further, when combining with organic matrix to make the thermal gel, the through-plane thermal conductivity along the fiber direction of the composite gel increases greatly, which is as high as 0.847 W m(-1) K-1 , the strategy of using aligned and networked thermal filler in the TIMs may be a more effective way to enhance the heat dissipation of future 5G communication electronics.