COST ANALYSIS RESEARCH
RESEARCH ABSTRACT
Carbon nanotubes, with their perfectly symmetrical geometry with delocalized electrons, are known to be excellent conductors of both electrons and phonons (thermal energy). Such arrays are being applied to various applications including the heat dissipation of computer processors. However, much of this conductivity is lost because carbon nanotubes cannot inherently bond with a mating surface covalently. Last year, it was determined that only through oxygen plasma etching, and the introduction of a symmetrically bonded substrate as a juncture between the oxidized bonds of the carbon nanotubes and mating surface, in that case an aluminum plate, would increase the thermal dissipation of nanotubes due to a high contact success of 0.73.
However, the full story is not recognized from this research, as such substrates are extremely expensive to manufacture. The purpose of this research is to determine and develop a relationship between the fermi levels of organic substrates, all of which are used in the adhesive industry, and the contact success that the substrates enable between Multiwalled carbon nanotubes and metallic mating surfaces.
Three chemicals (aminopropyl triethoxysilane, hydroxylsilane hydrochloride, and methyl-2-silicoacrylade) were applied to a plasma-etched CNT array and temperature gradients between the top of the resulting juncture and the heat source were calculated. The fermi level of each chemical was also calculated based on the fermi energy of the bonds. The relationship had a positive correlation between Fermi diversion and contact success, but the actual relationship was close (0.98 correlation coefficient) to the following equation:
𝑦 =√3 /2 e^(x-12) + (1-√3 /2)
Equation 1, the developed relationship, is consistent with the initial hypothesis of an exponential curve based on 5-space phonon vector theory, but the added coefficients are likely attributed to both symmetricity ratios and phonon transport without any adhesive forces.
In conclusion, the relationship between Fermi level and contact success is given by an exponential expression, with sharply diminishing contact success (conductivity) with a slight decrease in symmetricity from perfectly equilateral geometry.