Scientists develop efficient electronics cooling with graphene nanoflakes

Researchers have developed a film that can conduct heat well by adding a layer of graphene nanoflakes. This makes it possible to better dissipate heat in electronics and other devices that have difficulty dissipating heat.

In fact, research from Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology has almost gone so far that a pilot to take the film into production is close, says Johan Liu, one of the authors of the article. In doing so, the group has made progress since discovering a way to better apply graphene to chips in order to provide cooling.

The thermal conductivity quality of the film increased significantly when a functional layer with graphene nanoflakes was added, compared to a film without such a layer. This is mainly because the contact resistance is drastically reduced by the layer.

Research through simulations of the layers and the way of heat transfer already showed that the material could possibly work well to dissipate heat. The functional layer with the graphene nanoflakes, as it were, encloses the heat and does not pass on movements from within the crystalline structure to the other layers.

The researchers showed, among other things, that the temperature at the hottest point of a test chip with a heating element operating at 1300W/cm² could be reduced by approximately 28 °C, from 135 to 107 degrees. The graphene film is used in the chip as a heat spreader and is bonded to the silicon dioxide. If the graphene was not used in the flake form, the temperature difference was 17 degrees. The flakes thus provided an additional 11 degrees of cooling.

The article can be found in Nature Communications.

Schematic representation of graphene film on substrate. Source: Nature Communications