SUMMARY

Thermal management is a key challenge to improving the performance of microelectronic devices with ever increasing power densities. For many high performance applications, the thermal resistance between chip and heat sink may account for half of the total thermal budget. Chip-level heat dissipation is therefore a critical bottleneck to the development of advanced microelectronics with high junction temperatures. Recently, aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays have been developed as possible next generation thermal interface materials (TIM) to overcome this thermal limitation, however the thermal physics of these nanoscale interfaces remains unclear. In the present work, the thermal interface resistance between a carbon nanotube and adjoining carbon, silicon, or copper substrate is investigated through non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulation. Phonon transmission is calculated using a simplified form of the diffuse mismatch model with direct simulation of the phonon density of states under quasi-harmonic approximation. The results of theory and simulation are reported as a function of temperature in order to estimate the importance of anharmonicity and inelastic scattering. The results are interpreted as a means of understanding the mechanisms of thermal transport and assisting future CNT TIM research and development.