Investigation of Dielectric Strength of Electrospun Nanofiber Based Thermal Interface Material

Electrospinning is a historical technology which has existed for over seventy years. Recently, it has been introduced to make a novel electrospun nanofiber based thermal interface material (nano-TIM). Until now, there are few articles on the dielectric properties of nanofiber. Since the electrical insulation property is an important parameter for thermal interface materials, we investigated the dielectric strength of electrospun nano-TIM in this paper. The experiment data have shown that the nano-TIM materials have dielectric strength of 5.82 kV/mm, which is believed to be adequate for microelectronics applications. Further analysis and FEM simulation further revealed the breakdown mechanism. Reasons for the low dielectric strength as compared with that of bulk polymer were also discussed in this paper.