Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York have developed a new method for increasing the heat transfer rate across two different materials. The team hopes that the study, titled “Bonding-Induced Thermal Conductance Enhancement at Inorganic Heterointerfaces Using Nanomolecular Monolayers,” will lead to new advances in cooling computer chips and LED devices, harvesting waste heat and other applications.
“Interfaces between different materials are often heat-flow bottlenecks due to stifled phonon transport. Inserting a third material usually only makes things worse because of an additional interface created,” lead researcher Ganapati Ramanath, a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at RPI, said.
The research team demonstrated a significant increase in thermal conductance at the interface between two materials by “sandwiching” a layer of ultrathin “nanoglue” between layers of copper and silica.
According to the team, use of the nanoglue improved adhesion between the metal and ceramic layers and facilitated more efficient transport of phonons.
“Our method of introducing an ultrathin nanolayer of organic molecules that strongly bond with both the materials at the interface [gave] rise to multi-fold increases in interfacial thermal conductance, contrary to poor heat conduction seen at inorganic-organic interfaces,” Ramanath said.
The study was funded with support from the National Science Foundation.
For more information, visit Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
