Nanostructure-Enabled Significant Thermal Transport Enhancement across Solid Interfaces

The efficiency of thermal transport across the interfaces presents large challenges for modern technologies such as thermal management of electronics. In this paper, we report significant enhancement of thermal transport across solid interfaces by nanopatterning the surface. We utilized nanopillars as the analogy of fins that have been used for macroscopic heat transfer enhancement in heat exchangers. We found that the major benefit sterns from the enlarged effective contact area due to the increased surface area of the nanopatterned surface. The finding from this work should be universal and can benefit the thermal management of electronics, especially high power electronics where self-heating has been a bottleneck for their further advancement.