Novel Copper/Carbon Nanofibres Composites for High Thermal Conductivity Electronic Packaging

INTRODUCTION Due to its outstanding thermal conductivity, carbon nanofibres, also known as vapour grown carbon fibres (VGCFs), is one of the most promising reinforcing materials of metal matrix composites for thermal dissipation of future power electronics. Like its close relatives, carbon nanotubes, VGCFs possess outstanding physical properties due to their near-perfect carbon structure. However, although CNTs shows superior conductivity, VGCFs provide a much better availability and costperformance ratio for industrial production of electronic packaging components. Their tailorable CTE, low density and high thermal conductivity, makes this kind of metal matrix nanocomposites an ideal material for heat sinks in high power and high frequency electronic devices working at much higher temperatures, such as those based on new GaAs and GaN semiconductors. Several attempt s have been carried out during the last years to use VGCFs as a reinforcement in polymers for several purposes [1,2,3]. Nevertheless, very few studies have been successfully carried out using VGCFs as reinforcement in a metallic matrix [4,5]. Many problems not yet fully overcome, such as dispersion of nanofibres, blending nanofibres and metallic powders, absence of wettability between carbon and copper, compaction, sintering, etc.., make the production of this material a really challenging task but, at the same time, a really interesting development with huge potential use in industrial components. The present work shows a manufacturing procedure of Cu/VGCFs composites and a preliminary physical and microstructural characterisation.