Designer heat spreading materials and composites

Abstract

A solid-state system model of “Designer” thermal conducting nano/micro materials used for more effective heat spreading in electronic packaging manufacture is described. The “Designer” materials are much lighter (sp.gr. 2.5g/cc vs. 9.2g/cc) and stronger (modulus 500–820Gpa vs 120GPa) than copper. The material has a coefficient of thermal expansion (1×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−6</sup> vs. 17×10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−6</sup> ) much higher thermal conductivity (500–1200W/mK vs. 390W/mK) and greater heat spreading capabilities. In addition there is the ability to control the thermal conductivity, coefficient of thermal expansion and thermal spreading coefficient in any of the three material dimensions. A brief description characterizing the material and its manufacturing process is here-within. To illustrate the performance gain of using these materials, the base plate of Intel’s CPU Cooler CL-P0030 heat-sink is chosen as an example of a high-heat source cooling device i.e. ≫100W/cm2. Heat greater than 100Wm2 is equivalent to the concentrated focused energy of ≫1000 Suns. (electronic devices melt in seconds without proper cooling) This is a macro example of a replacement for the thermal conducting packaging material structures currently used in electronics.