Introduction During the last ten years, developments in LED semiconductors have led to an important change in LED applications from that of luminous indicator to that of illuminator. With LEDs now advancing into several lighting fields, LEDs have become one of the standard methods of producing light, joining more traditional sources such as incandescent, fluorescent and … [Read more...]
Exploring the Limits of Air Cooling
Introduction Heat from electronic devices is an integral part of information processing, not a nuisance that can someday be eliminated. This is a physical principle that is independent of the device of information processing. However, when viewed in the historical perspective, the severity of heat problems has not monotonically increased. It came to the fore some time ago, … [Read more...]
Thermal Resistance Comparison Of Graphite Foam, Aluminum, And Copper Heat Sinks
Introduction With thermal solutions becoming more challenging, there is a push for novel cooling ideas or materials to further mitigate thermal issues facing today's electronics. In these design situations, the proven method of analytical calculations, modeling, and laboratory testing is sometimes bypassed in the search for a quick "cure-all" solution. Evolutionary progress is … [Read more...]
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Heatsink
Introduction When faced with the task of calculating the temperature of an IC in a package, which has an external heat sink mounted to it, a thermal engineer usually obtains a values of three thermal resistances: ΘJC , the junction-to-case thermal resistance for the package, ΘCS , the case-to-sink thermal resistance representing the thermal interface material (TIM) between the … [Read more...]
Vibration Analysis For Electronic Equipment
This topic is rather esoteric and usually an afterthought in commercial and industrial applications. In military and defense electronics, it is one of the major drivers for design and product architecture early on in the design cycle with specific targets/budgets. As with junction temperature requirements in a thermal design, there are structural dynamic issues that need to be … [Read more...]
