Low thermal expansion metal composite-based heat spreader for high temperature thermal management

Abstract

The electronic industry is facing pressing needs for cooling system with high-performance in heat transfer and matched coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) with the chips. Metal composite materials (MCMs) with low CTE can be used in cooling chips to overcome the thermal expansion mismatch between the cooling substrate and chips. However, low thermal conductivity of MCMs limits their application in electronic cooling systems. Increasing the percentage of components with high thermal conductivity can enhance the thermal conductivity of MCMs, but it often leads to increase CTE as well. Here, we demonstrate that vapor–liquid phase change can improve the heat transfer performance of tungsten-copper (W-Cu) alloy-based MCMs while maintain their low CTEs. Such strategy reduces the maximum temperature and thermal resistance of MCMs, and also allows for heat spreading from concentrated heat source with high power density. The W-Cu alloy-based vapor chamber (VC) has low thermal resistance of 0.38 K/W at 100 W and high lateral thermal conductivity of ~1727 W/(m·K). The W-Cu alloy-based VC can be readily integrated with the chip and heat sink to serve as cooling substrates for dissipating the heat and simultaneously lowering the thermal expansion mismatch by using its high thermal conductivity and low CTE.