The electronics industry has a hot problem. What’s the solution?

The basic computer chip solution of cooling by air circulation is used in desktop computers, many servers and game boxes, and some laptops. The typical chip is joined to an integrated heat spreader with a thermal interface material (TIM) in a package. The package in turn is typically joined with another TIM to a sizable heat sink where a fan circulates air to promote dissipation of heat from the device.

Some manufacturers have turned to alternative or hybrid approaches depending on their technical and business demands:

• Heat pipes are used in many laptops and are increasingly integrated with heat sinks in applications requiring higher performance to increase the efficiency of the sink.
• Solutions using the closed circulation of some kind of fluid are increasingly considered due to their higher performance. Some augment cooling by using phase change materials; others rely on extremely high-conductivity fluids such as liquid metal alloys.
• Some high-end solutions feature direct evaporative cooling by spraying a liquid onto the hot chip, where it evaporates, taking heat with it. The vapor is recaptured, condensed, and recirculated.

Regardless of the components used in the overall thermal solution, the chief attributes of interest are performance, manufacturing flexibility, reliability, price, and availability. Manufacturing flexibility is the supplier’s ability to produce parts in different quantities customized to a particular customer’s needs, and the ease with which a customer can integrate the technology into their own products.

In the selection of a thermal solution, care must be taken to assess how the overall results are affected by the selection of the various components. For example, the selection of an extremely powerful fan can allow a reduction in the size and expense of the heat sink, but these savings may be outweighed by the cost or noise of the fan, or by changes in the overall reliability of the system. Similarly, the use of an extremely high-performing thermal interface material (TIM) or heat spreader can allow the use of a simpler and cheaper heat sink, or even the elimination of the fan. The increased cost of a better heat spreader may be more than recovered by cost reductions elsewhere in the overall thermal solution.

There are many heat spreader alternatives to Enerdyne Solutions’ Polara available:

Still other approaches include: Electro-kinetic MEMS, Microchannel MEMS, 2-phase thermosyphons, thermionics, embedded droplet impingement, MEMS air jets, planar heat pies/wicks, thermoacoustics, superlattice TECs, and vapor chamber sinks.

There are many TIM alternatives to Enerdyne Solutions’ Indigo available:

These are some of the wide variety of cooling approaches that can be considered in achieving a cooling solution that meets the various performance, cost, size, weight, acoustic, and other requirements. We encourage our customers to explore other alternatives because we are confident that we have a better solution.

Read about thermal interface materials and find out why Indigo is a superior high-performance solution.

Read about heat spreaders and find out why Polara can improve any thermal solution.

Need assistance? We can do some of the work for you, starting with a free thermal analysis of your application. If we don't have the right solution for your needs we'll suggest others who might. We have cool solutions for hot problems—including yours! Contact us today.