Advanced T/R Module Thermal Management and Packaging Development (kTC P206)

Under Phase I, k Technology Corporation (kTC) has demonstrated the feasibility of producing a low-cost, integrated T/R cold plate with a low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) and high conductance. The measured conductance of produced modules had twice the conductance of baseline designs. This design was enabled by encapsulating high conductivity annealed pyrolytic graphite (APG) with a low-cost, low-CTE metal matrix composite material. This low CTE metal matrix composite was also developed under the effort. This primary objective of the proposed phase II effort is to develop a material system and packaging configuration that can significantly improve the performance and lower the cost of the thermal management system of current and future phased array radar systems. To this end, three related efforts are proposed: (1) Develop low cost encapsulated APG forming techniques; (2) Develop and qualify a low cost metal matrix composite encapsulation material (low-CTE material) and; (3) Integrate the forming technique with the low cost metal matrix composite to make low-CTE encapsulated APG integrated cold plates.