One of the big issues that I have with that study is that the original researcher "claims" that the diamond particles they used cannot be smaller than 25 microns, which is NOT true. It may have been that they could not grind the diamond particles smaller than 25 microns, but you can get diamond powder in any size you want. I regularly use 0.10, 0.25, 1, 3, 6, 9, and 15 micron diamond polishing mixtures. I am not knocking the carbon black properties, they do sound very good, and should indeed work, but diamond in some size range "could" possibly give better results. Diamond powders are really not that expensive in these smaller size ranges either.
Like I said, I am not disputing the carbon black properties, I just think there is some slightly misleading information given and the study could have been more extensive. 25 micron diamond particles are indeed quite large for use in this application, so one has to wonder if the researcher was trying to skew the results.
The carbon black softness and conformability properties are very nice, whereas diamond particles could/will embed and press into the surfaces giving a good thermal interface as well (at the expense of some slight surface damage.)
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