It has been well-established that poor thermal management is a limiting factor in the reliability and lifetime of electronic components in advanced electronic systems, leading to the search for improved materials for electronic components such as substrates or heat sinks. In this research, a novel reinforcing fiber, diamond fiber, for enhancing thermal management in electronic components is proposed. The fibers will be produced by depositing polycrystalline diamonds on highly graphitic, sub-micron graphite fiber through a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique. Successful development of diamond fibers will provide an excellent addition to available materials for heat removal for high density, high power electronic components, providing ultra high thermal conductivity, tailorable CTE, and good mechanical properties. The proposed research identifies an outstanding reinforcement to improve thermal performance of current materials. Success of the research could lead to new composites with much higher thermal conductivity and tailorable CTE for future electronic devices. These composites can be used as substrates and heat sinks.
