Self-assembled monolayer for polymer-semiconductor interface with improved interfacial thermal management

Reliability and lifespan of highly miniaturized and integrated devices will be effectively improved if excessive accumulated heat can be quickly transported to heat sinks. In this study, both molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and experiments were performed to demonstrate that self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) have high potential in interfacial thermal management and can enhance thermal transport across polystyrene (PS) / silicon (Si) interface, modelling the common polymer/semiconductor interfaces in actual devices. The influence of packing density and alkyl-chain length of SAMs are investigated. Firstly, MD simulations show that the interfacial thermal transport efficiency of SAM is higher with high packing density. The interfacial thermal conductance (ITC) between PS and Si can be improved up to 127 ± 9 MW m-2 K-1, close to the ITC across metal and semiconductor interface. At moderate packing density, the SAMs with less than 8 carbon atoms in alkyl-chain show superior improvements over those with more ...