High Performance Carbon Nanotube Heat Sink

Carbon nanotubes possess superior thermal conductivity along their axial direction, which is greater than that of diamond. Their nanoscale geometry offers incredibly high surface area for heat exchange with air and their one-dimensional nanostructures provide the possibility of forming extremely intimate contact between nanotube tips and die surface. Thus, carbon nanotube heat sinks have the potential to provide unprecedented thermal performance with low weight, which would satisfy the Air Force requirement to reduce the weight of solid-state radio frequency power amplifiers. In this program, Agiltron, teamed with Rice University, proposes to integrate a state-of-the-art patterned carbon nanotube growth, a nano-engineered die-CNT interface, and novel heat sink design to realize a light-weight carbon nanotube heat sink with unprecedented performance. The feasibility of the proposed integrated approach will be demonstrated in Phase I. In phase II the heat sink would be optimized and tested with a full sized high power transistor. BENEFIT: The proposed carbon nanotube based heat sinks are expected to have unprecedented thermal performance with light weight, which will meet the needs of many DoD missions. The immediate application is to significantly reduce the weight of the Eglin radar (AN/FPS-85) transmit amplifiers for one-man lift. Other applications will be found in higher-frequency military and commercial ground based, airborne and space borne subsystems. A wide range of commercial applications will be found for cooling electronic devices ( e.g., CPUs and GPUs in desktops and laptops, LED light sources), lasers and capacitors in order to improve/keep their performance or extend their lifetime.