Plasma treatment achieving enhanced thermal conductivity of a thermal interface material

In the modern microelectronic devices, one of the most important challenges is efficient removal of heat via thermal interface materials. The interface problem between fillers and polymer is an important issue that restricts the thermal conductivity of thermal interface materials. Herein, we introduce plasma treatment technology to treat the surface of carbon fibers (CFs) to improve the interfacial compatibility between CFs and polymer matrix. The introduced polar oxygen-containing functional groups can promote the intermolecular bonding and the compatibility between the CFs and polymer matrix after the plasma treatment, thereby improving the thermal conductivity of the composites. At the CFs loading of 30 wt%, the CFs/PDMS composites show a better through-plane thermal conductivity (0.43 Wm−1K−1) compared to that of untreated CFs/PDMS composites (0.35 Wm−1K−1). Plasma treatment technology which is environmentally friendly has less damage to fillers and has broad application prospects.