We had a great group for our thermal webinar, “Heat Sink Materials: Choices and Tradeoffs” we just held on Thursday3/24. We wanted to highlight some key points from our webinar. We’ll soon have it up in our Webinar archives for you to view at your convenience. First, we want to thank Dr. Carl Zweben for his time and knowledge in sharing on this important topic.
So, what are a few new, cutting edge, facts you should know on advanced materials?
- Many engineers only know two materials: copper and aluminum but there are many other choices that should also be part of your solution set
- There are three basic types of Advanced Thermal Management Materials:
- Monolithic carbonaceous materials
- Composite materials
- Metal/metal alloys-composites
- Some Advanced Thermal Management materials are cheaper than copper: Al/SiC has a type that is more efficient than copper and less expensive; Some Al/SiC are 1/3 the weight and 10x the thermal conductivity of “Kovar”
- Curtiss-Wright CoolWall Technology utilizes a mixture of CoolWall utilizes a mixture of metallic composites to deliver enhanced thermal performance. It has the thermal conductivity ~ 3x aluminum at ~10% less weight
- Advance reinforcement thermal interface material (TIM) have the greatest potential to improving the thermal resistance of TIM. Some types include TIM based on: Carbon nan0fiber, Carbon nanotubes, and Natural graphite
- Natural graphite heat spreaders can be made super thin for notebook computer, tablets and other devices of similar geometries.The Sony VAIO PCG-X505/S-P Extreme utilizes the Natural Graphite Spreadershield for such an application
- Advanced Materials can be cost effective if your only other alternative is costly already, though more “mainstream”. A good example is the Apple Power Mac G5. The liquid cooling costs $100 plus labor alone.Could an advanced material have done the job as reliably at cost par while removing the risk of using liquid?
There’s much more in the presentation and we’ll have it loaded onto our ATS thermal management webinar archives for you this week!