Synthesis of graphite to graphene by modified electrochemical exfoliation method towards enhanced thermal interface material for heat sink application

Today, heat sink power source has increased significantly for many applications. The study of heat transfer in heat sink is important to ensure that the life expectancy, reliability and performance of the heat sink are higher. The main objective of this research is to reduce the temperature of the heat sink junction by using a thermal interface material, also known as a heating pad. The material used in the heat pad must have high thermal conductivity and heat resistance. Therefore, graphene is used as the main filler material in this research to replace some of the existing materials. The composition of graphene is studied in-depth to determine the effect of thermal conductivity to obtain optimum thermal conductivity. The synthesis process is carried out using the modified electrochemical exfoliation method because it is simple and does not cost much compared to the other methods. Once the graphene production is done, it becomes a thermal interface material. Thermal interface material made of graphene will be compared to existing thermal interface material in terms of thermal conductivity. In this study, the effect of graphene composition greatly influenced the thermal conductivity value, the higher the value of the graphene composition used, the higher the thermal conductivity value. Then, the simulation was performed using Ansys-Fleunt software to obtain the temperature value of the heat sink using the same parameters as the actual conditions. From the results, it is shown that the heat sink temperature using the thermal interface material made from graphene successfully reduced the temperature by 20 to 40 %. The increase in power supplied to the heat sink as well as the chip caused the temperature to rise to 95.6 ºC at 10 Watt but using a thermal interface material made of graphene reduced the temperature to 62.4 ºC. This high-temperature reduction can prevent electronic components, especially heat sinks from becoming very hot and damaged. In addition, the thermal interface material made of graphene has also been shown to have the highest thermal conductivity compared to other thermal interface materials. The 20 to 60 % increase in thermal conductivity makes it the best thermal interface material to be used in reducing temperature to heat sinks. Material which is studied from 10 wt. % up to 100 wt. %. The importance of this study is to help electronic designers decide on the optimum composition that can be used while at the same time, maximizing the reliability and durability of the heat sink.