Hexagonal Boron Nitride-Graphene Heterostructures with Enhanced Interfacial Thermal Conductance for Thermal Management Applications

Atomically thin monolayers of graphene show excellent electronic properties which have led to a great deal of research on their use in nanoscale devices. However, heat management of such nanoscale devices is essential in order to improve their performance. Graphene supported on hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) substrate has been reported to show enhanced (opto)electronic and thermal properties as compared to extensively used SiO2/Si-supported graphene. Motivated by this, we have performed temperature- and power-dependent Raman spectroscopic measurements on four different types of (hetero)structures: (a) h-BN (BN), (b) graphene (Gr), (c) h-BN on graphene (BG), and (d) graphene encapsulated by h-BN layers from both top and bottom (BGB), all supported on the SiO2/Si substrate. We have estimated the values of thermal conductivity (kappa) and interfacial thermal conductance per unit area (g) of these four (hetero)structures to demonstrate the structure-activity (thermal) relationship. We report here the values of kappa and g for h-BN supported on SiO2/Si as 280.0 +/- 58.0 W m(-1) K-1 and 25.6 +/- 0.4 MW m(-2) K-1, respectively. More importantly, we have observed an improvement in both thermal conductivity and interfacial thermal conductance per unit area in the heterostructures, which ensures better heat dissipation in devices. The kappa and g of h-BN encapsulated graphene on SiO2/Si (BGB) sample was observed to be 850.0 +/- 81.0 W m(-1) K-1 and 105 +/- 1 MW m(-2) K-1, respectively, as opposed to 600.0 +/- 93.0 W m(-1) K-1 and 1.15 +/- 0.40 MW m(-2) K-1, respectively, for graphene on SiO2/Si substrate. Therefore, we propose that for graphene-based nanoscale devices, encapsulation with h-BN is a better alternative to address heat management issues.