Modular Heat Sinks for Enhanced Thermal Management of Electronics

Date

2021-06-01

Author

Hoque, Muhammad Jahidul
Günay, Ahmet Alperen
Stillwell, Andrew
Gurumukhi, Yashraj
Pilawa-Podgurski, Robert C. N.
Miljkovic, Nenad

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Power electronics are vital for the generation, conversion, transmission, and distribution of electrical energy. Improving the efficiency, power density, and reliability of power electronics is an important challenge that can be addressed with electrothermal codesign and optimization. Current thermal management approaches utilize metallic heat sinks (HSs), resulting in parasitic load generation due to different potentials between electronic components on the printed circuit board (PCB). To enable electrical isolation, a thermal interface material (TIM) or gap pad is placed between the PCB and HS, resulting in poor heat transfer. Here, we develop an approach to eliminate TIMs and gap pads through modularization of metallic HSs. The use of smaller modular heat sinks (MHSs) strategically placed on high power dissipation areas of the PCB enables elimination of electrical potential difference, and removal of electrical isolation materials, resulting in better cooling performance due to direct contact between devices and the HS. By studying a gallium nitride (GaN) 2 kW DC-DC power converter as a test platform for electrothermal codesign using the modular approach, and benchmarking performance with a commercial off-the-shelf HS design, we showed identical power dissipation rates with a 54% reduction in HS volume and a 8 degrees C reduction in maximum GaN device temperature. In addition to thermal performance improvement, the MHS design showed a 73% increase in specific power density with a 22% increase in volumetric power density.

Subject Keywords

Modular heat sinks, TIM, Solder, Thermal via, Power coverter, GaN, Power density, Specific power

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/92336

Journal

JOURNAL OF ELECTRONIC PACKAGING

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4049294

Collections

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Article

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Citation Formats

M. J. Hoque, A. A. Günay, A. Stillwell, Y. Gurumukhi, R. C. N. Pilawa-Podgurski, and N. Miljkovic, “Modular Heat Sinks for Enhanced Thermal Management of Electronics,” JOURNAL OF ELECTRONIC PACKAGING, vol. 143, no. 2, pp. 0–0, 2021, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/92336.