Thermal chemical vapor deposition grown graphene heat spreader for thermal management of hot spots

Graphene of different layer numbers was fabricated using thermal chemical vapor deposition (TCVD), and it was demonstrated as a heat spreader in electronic packaging. Platinum thermal evaluation chips were used to evaluate the thermal performance of the graphene heat spreaders. The temperature of a hot spot driven at a heat flux of up to 430 W cm(-2) was decreased from 121 degrees C to 108 degrees C (Delta T approximate to 13 degrees C) with the insertion of the monolayer graphene heat spreader, compared with the multilayer (n = 6-10) ones' temperature drop of similar to 8 degrees C. Various parameters affecting the thermal performance of graphene heat spreaders were discussed, e.g. layer numbers of graphene, phonon scattering, thermal boundary resistance. We demonstrate the potentials of using a complementary metal oxide semiconductor compatible TCVD process to utilize graphene as a heat spreader for heat dissipation purposes. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.