Application of a Thermal Network Method to Thermal Analysis of Electronic Devices Using Phase Change Materials

This paper describes transient cooling technology for electronic equipment using Phase Change Materials (PCMs) and a heat sink with pin fins. We designed an electronic module including paraffin as the PCM and measured its transient temperature rise. The effects of the diameter of pin fins and heat dissipation values were investigated as design parameters. The results show that the temperature rise values were controlled by the thermal absorption effect due to the latent heat of the PCM. It is also confirmed that the proposed thermal network method with an equivalent specific heat model has strong potential for use in the analysis of electronic modules using PCMs.