When attaching an electronic device to a heat sink or heat spreader, it is critical to create good thermal contact to avoid high contact thermal resistances. To do so, thermal interface materials (TIMs) are often applied as intermediate layers between surfaces to improve the thermal pathway from where the heat is generated to where it’s…
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Flexible tubing is a very handy fluid conveyance option in liquid cooling systems. The ability to snake tubes into tight areas and avoid other components, without the need to do complex, high-precision tube bending of rigid tubes, makes system integrators’ lives easier during installation and maintenance. But how do these flexible tubes interface with pumps,…
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As electronic devices miniaturize, what happens to our cooling solutions? It’d be favorable if the heat sink area shrank concurrently so that we could fit more devices in the same space as before, and therefore achieve higher functionality in a smaller size. But with smaller devices comes higher power densities, making cooling that much more…
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There is a running joke about “universal standards” that goes something like this: “I’m tired of interfacing between the 5 different standards. What if we created a universal standard?” “Great idea! This is going to make things so much easier!” …………………. “I’m tired of interfacing between the 6 different standards. What if we created a…
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Although fluid fittings for liquid cooling systems are simple in concept, the actual execution of locating, ordering, and installing the correct fitting can turn into quite an exercise. For example, how many times have you had a string of three different fittings connected between two components because you did not have the perfect fitting on…
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Current State of Electronics Innovation Across military, government, and industrial sectors, electronic devices have been proliferating. Devices have continually become more capable while simultaneously shrinking in size, following the approximate cadence of Moore’s Law. This may seem like a given in today’s technological landscape, but it is quite a remarkable trend: continuing increases in throughput,…
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Thermal management of electronics can be simply described as using cool fluids to remove heat from hot devices. But what about these fluids? How do you know which fluid to use for your system? What properties matter for heat transfer and where do you find them? This post is a one-stop-shop for heat transfer fluid…
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Cooling has a major impact on the energy footprint of data centers. Often times, a large portion of this energy is used in the large chiller units that provide the low temperature coolant to keep data center electronics at safe operational temperatures. But what if there was a way to operate chillers less often? What…
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As we discussed in a previous post, thermal interface materials (TIMs) serve an important role in heat transfer systems. By filling the voids between device surfaces and heat sink surfaces, TIMs improve the thermal pathway from where the heat is generated to where it’s rejected. However, applying a TIM is not always an easy, straightforward,…
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Without a high resolution temperature measurement technique, the peak temperature of a high power device can be severely underestimated. Devices could therefore experience premature failure due to mischaracterization of operating temperature in the unresolved small features. To help remedy this issue, high resolution optical thermography methods are becoming more commonplace for more highly resolved temperature…
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