Graphite Foam Core Heat Exchangers for Thermal Management

MRi proposes to further the demonstration of graphite foam heat exchanger fabrication technology utilizing its innovative active solder joining alloys and processes (S-Bond). The proposed Phase II will build on the success of the Phase I feasibilitystudies that showed the active solder joined Gr-foam core heat exchangers to have over 15 x the heat transfer capacity as aluminum finned heat exchangers. Phase I developments resulted in the development of Gr-foams bonded to aluminum, copper and Al:SiCthermal base planes with heat transfer coefficients of over 15,000 W/m2K. This major advance in heat transfer capacity promises to revolutionize heat exchanger designs. The proposed Phase II research aims complete the developments on Phase I and toadvance the fabrication technology sufficiently to prove its capability to produce cost effective thermal management devices in emerging, fast growing market applications. Proposed Phase II research emphasizes demonstrators with applications in 1)directly cooled silicon devices, II) IC packaging cooling devices, iii) IGBT cooling modules, and iv) cross flow fluid cooling radiators for engine cooling. MRi proposes to team with technology sources, suppliers and end users to advance the design,fabrication and test of such demonstration devices. MRi is proposing to join with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), POCO Graphite, Thermacore and Performance Research to complete the critical developments and analyses of the proposed Gr-foam corethermal management devices. Phase II research will focus on proving the bonded Gr-foams' effectiveness in such high value added applications and contribute to the validation of this technology. The market potential for Gr-foam core heat exchangers has apotential by 2010 of over $500 Million, based on wide spread use in cooling high end servers, telecommunications, avionics, phased array radar, high power electronics and in high performance automotive and industrial heat exchangers, as well as in similarDoD applications. This market potential will be realized as the costs of the Gr-foams are lowered with an increase of market penetration, starting with successful high value applications where the increased performance capacity of the bonded Gr-foamsexceeds the increased costs.