Thermal Contact Conductance Analysis of Nitride and Carbonitride Thin Film Coatings for Thermal Interface Material Application

In order to reduce and maintain the bond line thickness between substrate and LED package, solid thin film with good thermal conductivity is suggested as thermal interface material and the proposed film thickness is about less than 1 µ. The surface parameter such as roughness and hardness is a key factor which alters the contact conductance between the two matt surfaces. Consequently, filtered vacuum cathodic arc deposited nitride thin films (CrN, TiN, AlTiN, and TiCN) on copper substrate were tested for thermal interface material applications in electronic packaging. The thermal contact conductance of the prepared thin films was evaluated using surface properties such as microhardness and surface roughness. The results were verified with the theoretical model. The measured microhardness and surface roughness of CrN thin film are 17 GPa (low) and 0.768 µm (high), respectively. The measured thermal contact conductance of all thin films showed linear properties for applied pressure and very close to the values of theoretical model. High value in thermal contact conductance of about 256 W/m² K was noticed with CrN thin film at 1100 kPa. The percentage of deviation for our measured contact conductance value from the theoretical model value was decreasing for the increased contact pressure and observed low value (7 pct) for CrN thin film at 1100 kPa. The thermal conductivity of all thin films was also calculated from the conductance model and observed high value (19.34 W/mK) with CrN thin film.