The Effect of Porous Material on the Improvement of the Micro-Chip Heat Dissipation

Heat dissipation is a very important subject when dealing with industrial application especially in modern semiconductor related applications. Several techniques have been developed to solve the heat generated problem, such as heat dissipation device in IC packaging, high heat conductivity materials, heat tube, force convection, etc. Porous material is used in this study. Porous material is known to have large interior surface, therefore, with proper force convection; it can easily carry heat away. Micro porous ceramic (porous size: 490 μm) is attached to uninterruptible power supply (UPS) power chips. The increase of the heat dissipation rate improves UPS performance. Heat transfer properties comparisons for power chip with and without micro porous materials attached are studies. Also, heat transfer rate under different fan speeds (force convection) is studied. The results show that, heat transfer increases with the use of micro porous materials, the effectiveness ranges between 2–22%. Also, the heat transfer rate varies with air flow rate, the increase of heat transfer is about 4–6%. The dust effect was also performed; experimental results show that heat transfer rate will not be affected by the accumulated dust if a micro porous material is applied.