Ever since the advent of the automotive alternator, or claw-pole alternating current generator, in the 1960's, there has been an ever-increasing thermal design challenge to cool the power electronics in these machines. Figure 1 depicts a typical cutaway section of a modern day alternator. At first glance one may think that cooling the diodes in a rectifier bridge of an … [Read more...]
Future trends in heat sink design
In today's electronics equipment, total system dissipated power levels are increasing with every new design. Increases in power levels combined with the market expectation of reduced package sizes lead to heat problems that, if uncontrolled, can significantly shorten the life of the electronics. Although this "increased power - decreased size" scenario has been prevalent for … [Read more...]
Computer-related thermal packaging at the millenial divide
Examples of state-of-the-art thermal management solutions at the dawn of the 21st century (left to right): a TCM module, a high-density heat sink, and an ultra performance, low profile fan-sink. Thermal management has served as a key enabling technology in the development of advanced microelectronic systems and has facilitated many of the "Moore's Law" [Moore, G.E., 1975] … [Read more...]
Improving productivity in electronic packaging with flow network modeling (fnm)
As the complexity and power density of electronics systems increase, so too does the demand for tools to improve both product quality and designer productivity. This is especially true for thermal designers who use Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools for thermal designs. Several important factors are driving this trend: System complexity has increased to the point that … [Read more...]
Direct liquid immersion cooling for high power density microelectronics
Introduction Since the development of the first electronic computers in the 1940s, thedevelopment of faster and denser circuit technologies and packages has beenaccompanied by increasing heat fluxes at the chip and package levels. Over theyears, significant advances have been made in the application of air coolingtechniques to manage increased heat fluxes. Although air cooling … [Read more...]
