A review on advanced carbon-based thermal interface materials for electronic devices

Abstract Electronic devices play a vital role in our lives and are expected to play an even bigger role in the future considering their immense contribution in every field. Current trends are drifting towards fabricating powerful devices with minimum size, which in turn puts a lot of pressure on the heat dissipation requirement in electronic device packaging, which is very crucial for their performance and life cycle. Presently available thermal interface materials (TIM) fail to fulfil the demand of high heat transfer, opening doors for research on more advanced TIM. Carbon based materials hold great promise in a plethora of applications. Fabricating TIM using carbon-based materials is considered best for efficient heat dissipation between the heat producing device and the heat dissipating device. This review article provides a summary of the state-of-the-art research covering the basics of TIM, the heat transfer mechanism, conventional TIM used and recent graphene-based TIM. It also covers topics related to the characterisation and parameters that should be taken into consideration in the fabrication processes. A systematic understanding in this field is provided through this article to trigger research in overcoming the limitations that persist in fabricating highly efficient TIM for commercial applications.