In the 1920s, the field of physics was in disarray. The reason was that many careful observations and experimental data could only be explained by conflicting theories; for example, some proved that light was a wave, while others provided it had a particle-like nature. Other experiments, such as those in black-body radiation or the photoelectric effect, could not be explained … [Read more...]
You’re Sending That Heat “Away” to Where, Exactly?
Engineers are generally hard-nosed realists and don’t rely on the mythical kingdoms of fairy tales where only good things can happen and all problems disappear. Still, there is one magical place which is often called out when dealing with the thermal aspects of design, and it has the simple name of “away.” How so? Cooling devices and techniques – including heat sinks, heat … [Read more...]
Balancing Local Versus Global Cooling Requirements
When you’re planning how to solve the ongoing problem of keeping things cool enough, it’s easy to mentally blur the lines between hot components and hot boxes. The difficulty is that the solution for one of these may not be adequate or appropriate for the other. Here’s the situation: in most systems, the heat sources are not distributed uniformly across the circuit board … [Read more...]
Cool Your Electronic Devices at the Component Level
Sponsored by International Manufacturing Services, Inc. (IMS) The IMS Aluminum Nitride (AlN) ThermaBridge™ is a simple, cost effective device which aids in thermal management. The ThermaBridge™ is designed to transport heat from one location to another through an electrically isolated, thermally conductive ceramic chip device with metallized terminals. Unlike copper strips, … [Read more...]
The Junction-to-Case Thermal Resistance: A One-Dimensional Underachiever in a Three-dimensional, Conjugate Heat Transfer World
INTRODUCTION As integrated circuits were becoming more widespread in the 1980’s, most of the developmental problems had to do the with electrical operation of the devices and not so much on cooling them, due to low power levels. It was the electrical engineers who did the functional testing, an activity that ultimately expanded to include thermal testing. Even the thermal … [Read more...]
