Thermal Ground Plane for Cooling Chips and Semiconductor Devices

BACKGROUND: Efficient cooling of semiconductor and integrated circuit devices is critical to their operation. Improvements in cooling allow further technological advancement. Titanium is a unique material suited well for harsh environments and is robust and shock resistant.

DESCRIPTION: Researchers have developed a novel Thermal Ground Plane (TGP) for cooling semiconductor devices and integrated circuits that capitalizes on the advantages of titanium as a material as well as wicking action. It consists of an integrated array of micro-scale pillars that serve as a hydrophilic wick array that are placed between titanium sheets. The creation of water vapor within the thermal ground plane causes a variety of wicking actions, as the vapor moves from vapor phase to liquid phase and re-circulates, to cool the chip or other semiconductor device that rests on the thermal ground plane, using similar principles to heat pipes. This TGP has an effective heat conductivity approaching ~20,000 W/mK, roughly 500 times higher than solid Copper.

ADVANTAGES:

* The Titanium TGP provides extremely high effective thermal conductivity;
* Titanium is ductile, light weight and suitable for harsh environments;
* Suitable for many applications (can be less than 1cm x 1cm or greater than 30cm x 30cm);
* Fabricated using existing processes such as deep etching, LASER and LCD processing.

APPLICATIONS:

* Semiconductors/Integrated circuit cooling apparatus

This technology is available for licensing. Patent pending.

REFERENCE: 2009-015

Attached files:


Type of Offer: Licensing



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