Dependence of thermal conductivity and mechanical rigidity of particle-laden polymeric thermal interface material on particle volume fraction

This paper reports the measurement of the thermal conductivity of particle-laden polymeric thermal interface materials for three different particle volume fractions. The experimental data are further compared with the percolation model and effective medium theory. We then introduce a method of obtaining the contact resistance between the particles and the polymeric matrix by a combination of percolation modeling and experimental data. We also discuss the dependence of the mechanical response of these particle-laden polymers for different filler or particle loading. A novel mechanical length scale is defined to understand the mechanical response of these materials, and is correlated to the viscosity of these materials.