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...]
Understanding Phase Change Materials
Although phase change materials (PCM) were introduced nearly twenty years ago, it was not until the development of the high-powered Pentium processor that this class of interface material gained widespread acceptance. The large quantities of heat produced by these processors necessitated a carefully designed thermal path where all of the thermal resistances were minimized. For … [Read more...]
Advanced Techniques for IC Surface Temperature Measurement
Introduction: The Need for IC Surface Measurement Techniques Current trends in microelectronic design generate challenges in both the design and test of integrated circuits (ICs). One area that has been gaining increased relevance with regard to the microelectronic evolution is thermal management/analysis, which proves essential in the domain of IC design to prevent reliability … [Read more...]
Diamonds are a Thermal Designer's Best Friends
Different forms of carbon, such as processed natural graphite, pyrolytic graphite, diamond-like carbon, and synthetic diamond, offer lots of possibilities for maximizing conductive heat transfer.Synthetic diamond has already found its place as a common solution for heat spreaders inside semiconductor laser components, where temperature stabilization is of utmost importance for … [Read more...]
Estimating Natural Convection Heat Transfer for Arrays of Vertical Parallel Flat Plates
A simple formula to estimate the natural convection heat transfer coefficient on a flat plate was presented in a preceding column [1]. If, instead of a single plate, we wish to consider a closely spaced array of vertically oriented parallel flat plates, a different formula is required. The geometry to be considered appears in Figure 1 and is typical of that for a vertically … [Read more...]
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