An experimental study of spectral radiative properties of multi-walled carbon nanotube coating for heat dissipation

Abstract

Thermal management serves a crucial role in the stable operation of electronic equipment due to its miniaturization and functionality. Enhancing radiation heat transfer through heat dissipation coating is an effective method to improve the heat dissipation performance of electronic devices in thermal management of narrow space. In this paper, we employed the high emissivity property of multi-walled carbon nanotubes to improve the radiative heat dissipation performance of the coating. The effect of the distribution of multi-walled carbon nanotubes on the emissivity of the coating was studied with the finite-difference time-domain method. The emissivity of the coating with random distribution of multi-walled carbon nanotubes was found to be greater than that of the coating with vertical distribution of multi-walled carbon nanotubes. In order to further investigate the radiative properties of randomly distributed multi-walled carbon nanotube coatings, we experimentally investigated the effect of coating thickness and multi-walled carbon nanotube mass fraction on the spectral radiative properties of the coatings. We obtained the relationships between coating thickness, carbon nanotube mass fraction and coating radiation power. The data can provide some guidance for the regulation of radiation power of heat dissipation coatings and the selection of common coating processes. The maximum average emissivity and radiation power of the multi-walled carbon nanotube coating is 0.97, and 491.6 W m−2, respectively.

Keywords

• Multi-walled carbon nanotube coating
• Radiative heat dissipation
• Spectral radiative properties
• Radiation power