An anti-leakage liquid metal thermal interface material

Abstract

Liquid metals (LMs) offer extremely low thermal resistance, and have been studied as an emerging thermal interface material (TIM). In this work, we propose an improved form of LM/indium film/LM sandwich pad as an efficient TIM. The sandwich-like structure was designed to avoid liquid leakage and oxidation of LM, and additional micropillar arrays were fabricated on the surface, which benefitted the improved wetting of the substrate surface. A series of thermal tests revealed the anti-leakage characteristic and thermal stability of LM/indium film/LM, whose thermal resistance can also reach as low as 0.036 cm² K W⁻¹. Additionally, the heat dissipation test performed on a commercial smart phone demonstrated that a LM/In/LM pad not only reduced the temperature of the CPU and back cover but also enhanced the runtime of a battery by 25%