Use of Carbon nanotubes in potential electronics packaging applications

Packaging of electronics is an important technology to interconnect, power, cool and protect the components in highly integrated systems. Continuous size shrinking and function integration of future electronics are expected to be driven mainly by the advances in packaging technology. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are proposed for many novel packaging solutions thanks to their unique electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties. This paper introduces potential use of CNTs in electronics packaging, in both interconnection and thermal management applications. The challenges of fully exploiting the great potential of CNTs in this field are also discussed.