ISSUE 104 | May 2019 | IN THIS ISSUE:

COOLING WIDE BAND-GAP MATERIALS IN POWER ELECTRONICS

Engineers are always looking for an edge in their designs to extract as much power and performance as possible from a system, while attempting to meet industry trends in miniaturization. In the power electronics industry, this has required an examination of the materials being used to overcome inherent limitations from heat, voltage, or switching speed.  A growing movement towards wide-bandgap materials, particularly silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) may be the answer. And with these new materials comes a variety of approaches to their thermal management.

ENGINEERING HOW-TO: REMOVING THERMAL INTERFACE MATERIALS

As you may already now, TIMs - thermal interface materials - are not especially easy to remove from heat sinks. But the needs to do so are common: repositioning the sink, switching to a better performing TIM, replacing components, etc. With the right tools and some patience, a heat sink can have its TIM removed completely. The approaches are similar for removing different kinds of TIMs.

INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENTS: EXTRUSION PROFILE HEAT SINKS

Extruded metal heat sinks are among the lowest cost, widest used heat spreaders in electronics thermal management. Besides their affordability, extruded heat sinks are lightweight, readily cut to size and shape, and capable of high levels of cooling.  This article covers the current industry status on materials for extruded heat sinks.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: COOLING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS

Most man-made electricity in the US is provided by thermoelectric power plants. In these large scale installations, water is boiled to steam to spin the plant’s turbines and to ultimately generate electricity. To provide the heat to produce this steam a power plant could burn coal, natural gas or oil. But, in fact, most plants don’t burn anything. Instead, they use a very hot, but carefully controlled core of nuclear material to provide the thermal energy for continuous steam.

COOLING NEWS: NEW THERMAL PRODUCTS SHOWCAST

Cooling news covers the new products in the market and available to engineers to solve thermal management challenges.  In this edition, we look at: Metal Oxide Microparticle Thermal Compound, Form in Place Liquid Thermal Gap Filler is Peel-able, All-In-One Liquid Cooler for Demanding Workloads and more.