Abstract: Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), with high thermal conductivity, large specific surface area, low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) and low density, become one of the research hotspots in the thermal management field. Application progress of carbon nanotubes in the thermal interface material, the thermal pipe,heat radiation in the microchannel and the base with high thermal conductivity et al is researched according to the thermal management technology types in this paper. The results show that CNTs can improve the thermal properties to some degree. However, due to complexity of process and conduction mechanism, many experi-mental results are worse than theory analysis. While process and conduction mechanism get more mature,CNTs will present better thermal properties in thermal management and it won't be long to apply them to military and commercial products.