Thermal Conductivity and Interfacial Thermal Barrier Resistance of the Particle Reinforced Metal Matrix Composites

Due to their good thermophysical properties, the metal matrix composites, especially particle reinforced isotropic composites, have been the research focus of thermal management materials for electronic packaging. Although there are lots of researches on these composites, the thermal conduction mechanism of them has not been understood profoundly. Several actual common models for calculating thermal conductivity are presented in this paper. Due to the interfacial thermal barrier resistance induced by the inclusion of particles, the experimental results are usually below the calculated value of above models. Hassehnan and Johnson induced the concept of an interfacial thermal barrier resistance and modified the Maxwell's formula by the boundary conductance. In this paper, the Maxwell's formula modified by Hasselman and Johnson is discussed. Many results show the variations of boundary conductance of composites, which attribute to the bonding conditions of the interfaces between the particles and the matrix phase in various synthesis conditions.