Fabrication of Compliant Three-Dimensional Microstructures as Surface Coatings for Dry Contact Thermal Conductance Enhancement

The thermal contact resistance between two surfaces is a pervasive hurdle to effective heat transport in avionics, telecommunications, data center, and other electronics thermal management applications. A novel concept for dry contact thermal conductance enhancement is presented that utilizes a custom-made projection micro-sterolithography (mu SL) system to fabricate 'spring-like' 3D microstructures which are used as a dry surface coating that allows conformal interface contact at low to moderate pressures (on the order of 10s of kPa or lower). We fabricate two kinds of spring structures to demonstrate viable mechanical deformation performance for such applications: 300 mu m-tall Belleville spring and 500 mu m-tall zigzag spring structures. The mechanical compliance of these heuristic microstructure designs is experimentally characterized. The compliance of these structures would allow them to conform to mating surfaces with similar to 10s of mu m waviness.