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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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"Thermal Management of Electronics and Energy Systems with Carbon Nanotubes"
Dr. Baratunde Cola
Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Tech
Increasingly, high performance electronic devices, circuits, and systems require improved heat transfer characteristics. Such improvements are also vital for enabling increased efficiency of solar and thermal energy harvesting. This seminar will cover an application of carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays designed to achieve reduced thermal contact resistance in electronic packages and energy systems. Methods of controlling and optimizing the synthesis of the arrays by plasmaenhanced chemical vapor deposition will be discussed. In the area of heat conduction, reduction of thermal contact resistance at solidāsolid interfaces enables reduced temperature drop between the solids and larger allowable temperature differences between the convective surfaces and cooling media. Experimental results, facilitated by a customized photoacoustic metrology technique, demonstrate that dry CNT interfaces can achieve comparable thermal performance to a soldered joint with a small bond line thickness. Possible mechanisms and models to explain experimental results will be discussed, as will opportunities for further research.