With the increasing adoption of wide-bandgap semiconductors such as SiC and GaN in high-power electronics, the thermal management of semiconductor devices has become critical. High thermal conductivity thermal interface materials (TIMs) are essential to minimize thermal contact resistance. Advanced fillers such as graphene, diamond nanosheets, and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) have been proposed, and their effectiveness strongly depends on the spatial continuity and orientation of the filler network. Excessive filler loading degrades mechanical strength and flexibility. Visualizing the spatial distribution of thermal conductivity is thus essential to optimize the filler structure. This study examines the correlation between the spatial distribution of thermal diffusivity and the internal filler structure in composite materials, employing both experimental and numerical methods. We proposed and have been developing a lock-in thermography-based laser periodic heating method to obtain the spatial thermal diffusivity distribution of composites [1]. In this study, the internal fiber-resin structure of CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced plastic) specimens was visualized using synchrotron X-ray computed tomography (SR-CT), meshed using GeoDict, and used to perform transient heat conduction simulations in ANSYS Fluent. The thermal diffusivity distribution obtained from simulations was compared with that measured by the lock-in thermography method.
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