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With the development of energy science and electronic technology, interfacial thermal transport has become a key issue for nanoelectronics, nanocomposites, energy transmission, and conservation, etc. The application of thermal interfacial materials and other physical methods can reliably improve the contact between joined surfaces and enhance interfacial thermal transport at the macroscale. With the growing importance of thermal management in micro/nanoscale devices, controlling and tuning the interfacial thermal resistance (ITR) at the nanoscale is an urgent task. This Review examines nanoscale interfacial thermal transport mainly from a theoretical perspective. Traditional theoretical models, multiscale models, and atomistic methodologies for predicting ITR are introduced. Based on the analysis and summary of the factors that influence ITR, new methods to control and reduce ITR at the nanoscale are described in detail. Furthermore, the challenges facing interfacial thermal management and the further progress required in this field are discussed.

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Recent years have witnessed a staggering escalation in the power density of modern electronic devices. Because increasingly high power density accumulates heat, efficient heat removal has become a critical limitation for the performance, reliability, and further development of modern electronic devices. Thermal interface materials (TIMs) are widely employed between the two solid contact surfaces of heat sources and heat sinks to increase heat removal for electric devices. Composites of graphene and matrix materials are expected to be the most promising TIMs because of the remarkable thermal conductivity of graphene. Here, the recent research on the thermal properties of graphene filled polymer composite TIMs is reviewed. First, the composition of graphene filled polymer composite TIMs is introduced. Then, the synthetic methods for graphene filled polymer composite TIMs are primarily described. This study focuses on introducing the methods for improving and characterizing the thermal properties of graphene filled polymer composite TIMs. Furthermore, the challenges facing graphene filled poly­mer composite TIMs for thermal management applications in the modern electronic industry and the further progress required in this field are discussed.

In this work, multilayer graphene (MLG), graphene oxide (GO) and carbon nanotube (CNT) are studied as fillers in epoxy resin to enhance thermal transport properties of polymer thermal interface material (TIM). The MLG/CNT filler significantly enhances the thermal conductivity of the epoxy matrix material, increasing thermal conductivity by about 553% at 25 wt% load. At the same time, theoretical models are used to predict the thermal conductivity of TIM, and the model predictions are in a reasonable agreement with the experimental values. We also analyzed the thermal contact resistance (TCR) at the interface between the experimentally obtained TIM and solid in detail. The TCR measured at a pressure of 0.75 MPa is 42.8 mm •K/W, which was reduced by a factor of 86.7 % compared to the absence of TIMs 2 (The TCR without adding any thermal interface material is 321.8mm •K/W). It is also established that although MLG contributes more to the 2 thermal conductivity of epoxy resin than GO, GO/epoxy composites are superior to MLG/epoxy composites in reducing the total TCR of solid-solid interface. Our results provide a guideline to enhance thermal transport properties of epoxy resin-based carbon nanocomposites as thermal interface materials (TIMs) for various thermal management applications.