An experimental investigation on thermal contact resistance across metal contact interfaces

Thermal contact resistance is an important parameter for the thermal management of electronics packaging. A type of test instrument for measuring thermal contact resistance was presented in this paper. Thermal contact resistance across a brass-brass (Cu-Cu) interface was investigated by the present instrument. The results show that the contact thermal resistance is at the magnitude of 10-4 for the present test samples. Experimental results were also compared with theoretical computation results, and the reasons for the difference between them discussed. Based on the experimental results, it was found that in most cases, the real contact surface is different to the contact area of the interface we usually assume in the prediction model. The complicated and different shapes of the real contact interfaces explain why there are differences between experimental results and theoretical prediction results.