Characterization of Light Weight Heat Sink Materials for Thermal Management of Electronics

Thermal management of electronics is a critical part of maintaining high efficiency and reliability. Adequate cooling must be balanced with weight and volumetric requirements, especially for passive air-cooling solutions in electronics applications where space and weight are at a premium. It should be noted that there are systems where thermal solution takes more than 95% of the total weight of the system. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate and utilize advanced materials to design low weight and compact systems. Many of the advanced materials have anisotropic thermal properties and their performances depend strongly on taking advantage of superior properties in the desired directions. Therefore, control of thermal conductivity plays an important role in utilization of such materials for cooling applications. Because of the complexity introduced by anisotropic properties, thermal performances of advanced materials are yet to be fully understood. Present study is an experimental and computational study on characterization of thermal performances of advanced materials for heat sink applications. Numerical simulations and experiments are performed to characterize thermal performances of four different materials. An estimated weight savings in excess of 75% with lightweight materials are observed compared to the traditionally used heat sinks.