Effect of Thermal Grease on Thermal Conductivity for Mild Steel and Stainless Steel by ASTM D5470

Thermal management is a critical issue for the development of high-performance electronic devices. In this paper, thermal conductivity values of mild steel and stainless steel(STS) are measured by light flash analysis(LFA) and dynamic thermal interface material(DynTIM) Tester. The shapes of samples for thermal property measurement are disc type with a diameter of 12.6 mm. For samples with different thickness, the thermal diffusivity and thermal conductivity are measured by LFA. For identical samples, the thermal resistance(Rth) and thermal conductivity are measured using a DynTIM Tester. The thermal conductivity of samples with different thicknesses, measured by LFA, show similar values in a range of 5 %. However, the thermal conductivity of samples measured by DynTIM Tester show widely scattered values according to the application of thermal grease. When we use the thermal grease to remove air gaps, the thermal conductivity of samples measured by DynTIM Tester is larger than that measured by LFA. But, when we did not use thermal grease, the thermal conductivity of samples measured by DynTIM Tester is smaller than that measured by LFA. For the DynTIM Tester results, we also find that the slope of the graph of thermal resistance vs. thickness is affected by the usage of thermal grease. From this, we are able to conclude that the wide scattering of thermal conductivity for samples measured with the DynTIM Tester is caused by the change of slope in the graph of thermal resistance-thickness.