The primary objective of most electronics cooling applications is to keep the junction temperature of a hot component within an acceptable level in order to increase the longevity and performance of the device. In most cases, this requires some sort of heat spreader or heat sink to assist in the heat transfer. This also almost always needs to include some kind of thermal interface material to reduce the resistance between the IC and the heat sink. You have all kinds of choices really in this respect:
- Grease (very good, and very messy)
- Phase Change Material (as good as grease but requires consistant pressure over time)
- Thermal Tape ( does a good job, cheap, tough to rework a chip when you have to remove the heat sink)
- Epoxy (please, do not go there! Does the job, ruins your IC’s)
There are alot of choices and frankly no one choice is best as they all have specific spaces where they can be used effectively. ATS’s Thermal Lab has written a nifty white paper on this. We published it in our QPedia Thermal Journal but are linking to it here.  So, if you need to know more about this topic, please click to: “When to Use a Thermal Interface Material With your Heat Sinks and Why?“