Direct manufacturing of diamond composite coatings onto silicon wafers and heat transfer performance

This paper reveals new insights on how to achieve direct deposition of functional materials onto silicon wafers for cooling purposes. Manufacturing heat spreaders directly onto a microprocessor will negate the need for Thermal Interface Materials (TIMs) which often account for the highest resistances in a typical CPU thermal circuit. In this work we demonstrate that Cold Spray can be tailored to directly print onto a silicon wafer with a layered structure of aluminum, copper and diamond. The thermal performance of the copper/diamond coating was also separately measured using an in-house testing apparatus showing heat-transfer enhancements in agreement with theoretical predictions.