Silicon Platform With Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanotubes for Enhancing Thermal Conduction in Hybrid Optoelectronic Integration

Silicon platforms with high-number-density vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) on patterned substrates are designed and fabricated to provide efficient thermal conduction for hybrid optoelectronic integration and device packaging. The simulation shows that the platform can reduce the thermal resistance by >;40% , resulting from the help of the high-thermal-conductivity VACNTs and the increase in the heat spreading area of the patterned platform geometry. The platform can also provide the flexibility in device attachment and alignment. Applications of this platform to packaged light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are used to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. The experimental results verify that an increase in the saturation power and optical output power of LEDs can be obtained by packaging with the VACNT-integrated platform. The thermal resistance measurement also indicates that the proposed platform has lower thermal resistance than the planar silicon substrate.