THERMAL-CONDUCTIVITY OF COMPACTED ALN SAMPLES

The aim of this work is to obtain, without sintering, AlN compacts wit h a high thermal conductivity h. We report in this paper the main expe rimental results obtained. We show that a high value of lambda could n ot be reached by using only AlN powder. It is necessary to realize AlN /metal binary mixtures to improve the compactness of the samples. Phys ical aspects such as porosity, ductility of metals and chemical aspect s (purity, surface state of AlN powder) must be considered. For AlN-me tal compacts, it was considered to be of interest to use the hot-press ing technique in order to reduce porosity by bending metal grains, thu s to improving thermal conductivity. Published by Elsevier Science Lim ited.