Introduction Significant increases in temperature are believed to contribute to losses in reliability and performance, and can present serious complications to thermal management. The net thermal effect depends on a combination of factors related to the feature size, power densities, and material properties. In semiconductor devices, higher heat flux densities can result from … [Read more...]
A Cryocooler In Your Laptop Computer? Maybe…
Introduction A review of the technical and market impediments overcome in the development and eventual acceptance of cryocoolers for space-borne applications may shine light on the prospects for the use of such mechanical refrigeration systems in more widespread commercial uses. This premise is explored by first reviewing space cooler development history, then considering some … [Read more...]
Air-Cooled, Pin Fin Coldwall Design For Operation At Altitude
Introduction Numerous thermal management techniques exist depending on the system, application, and power level. For airborne electronic systems, the most direct approach to thermal management would be to use ambient air or chilled air, provided by the aircraft, routed to and blown across the electronics. However, in some applications potential contaminants in the cooling air, … [Read more...]
Critical Cooling Issues in High Power Radio Frequency Transmitter Amplifiers
Introduction While emerging methodologies correctly insist that thermal engineers should be involved right from the early conceptual stages of electronics product design [1], many situations still require thermal analysis well after the introduction of the product to its intended application. Military transmitters installed in the 1980's and 1990's and still in operation today … [Read more...]
Packaging And Temperature Control Considerations For Planar Waveguide Circuits
Optical Networking The all-optical network has been emerging as a solution to provide higher bandwidth, lower cost systems for handling high capacity network traffic. Due to the inherent limits of copper wire and the high cost-per-bit of electrical systems, service providers will replace electrical components with fiber optic counterparts wherever possible as the cost of the … [Read more...]