Study on Effective Thermal Conductivity of Epoxy- Al2O3 Composites

Abstract

The motive of our present work is to estimate the thermal conductivity of the epoxy based polymer composite filled with aluminium oxide or alumina (Al2O3) particulate for the purpose of exploring its use in the field of microelectronic industry. In microelectronic industry there is too much demand of low weight and high thermal conductivity, low electrical conductivity materials for the purpose of excellent heat dissipation through the component so that product life can be increased. Here we have worked on low to high volume percentage of the filler up to the mark of 0 to 26.18% to calculate their corresponding thermal conductivity, and tried to achieve our goal. First suitable mathematical model has been developed using sphere- in –cube models having face centered arrangement of spherical particle, then derived the expression for thermal resistance of that model and finally with the help of thermal resistance we calculate the thermal conductivity of that model with different volume percentage of the filler material. After doing all that verified our result obtained from mathematical model with the experimental results for each specimen of different volume fraction. Results are also compared with the various available mathematical model like Aggarwal and Satapathy model, rules of mixture, Maxwell model, Raleigh model, Lewis and Neilson model etc. As there is continuous miniaturization in the field of the microelectronics industry demanded need of having better heat dissipation along with low high electrical resistivity. The material is selected to fulfill the requirement of the demand. Here epoxy is used as the matrix material whereas aluminium oxide is used as filler materials.