Advanced Low Thermal Resistance, Large Heat Capacity Coolers For Semiconductor Devices

There is a critical need for revolutionary approaches for thermal management of 21st century semiconductor devices and hardware, such as advanced high performance computers, high-power laser diodes and solar cells for the conversion of sun light to renewable energy. The one limiting factor for all of the above extremely important and compelling technologies is waste heat management that can remove several kilowatts of waste heat while simultaneously providing a low thermal resistance to that keeps the semiconductor junction temperature as low as possible. The reason for maintaining a low junction temperature is that all semiconductors perform better at lower temperature. SRL has recently demonstrated the dramatic potential of our advanced thermal management technology by extracting more than a kilowatt of optical power from a centimeter-wide laser-diode (LD) bar, which represents a 10X increase over the state-of-the-art. This successful demonstration was completed by attaching the LD chip to a pre-prototype, low thermal-resistance, high thermal-capacity, enhanced-performance impingement-cooler (EPIC). In this effort, SRL will demonstrate that the EPIC cooler can be built with a thickness of 3mm and preserve its low thermal resistance and high thermal capacity