An integrated vent, heatsink and EMI shield

Abstract

A vent component made of a thermally and electrically conductive material was developed to replace a part of or the whole conventional vent element of an electronic equipment enclosure, and also to serve simultaneously as a heatsink and an electromagnetic interference (EMI) shield. By thermally connecting IC devices to the vent component using a high efficiency transfer medium, the sidewalls of vent holes act as extended surface of a heatsink. In the meantime, vent holes with a given thickness become waveguides that prevent EMI leakage from the apertures. As such, the integrated vent component has a major advantage over the conventional design in that EMI and thermal aspects of the enclosure design are actually implementing each other; what makes an effective heatsink with large number of small holes and a thick wall will also result in an effective EMI shield. Additionally, this vent component turned heatsink will receive 100% cooling air thus rendering optimal thermal management solutions in terms of heatsink volume and fan power management. Further, the heatsink is remote to heat sources and will consequently have far less space restrictions thus allowing larger heatsinks to accommodate larger thermal loads and yielding higher packaging density at the same time.