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

"Radar antenna and T/R module thermal management and cooling technologies are critical for today's high power radars. A significant investment is made each year in the continued development of increasingly robust and sophisticated cooling systemtechnologies, which are applied to the ballistic missile technology program and other major defense acquisition programs.kTC proposes to develop an encapsulated annealed pyrolytic graphite (APG) cold plate with integrated cavities for use as T/R module packages. The encapsulation material will have a CTE value close to the T/R module components to allow for direct mounting.The cavity walls will accommodate the electrical feed-throughs and hermetic metal lid. The conductivity of the cold plate will be greater than 900 W/mK (five times aluminum) and the conductance of the thermal path from the T/R components to the clod plateedges will be 40% better than the current solution (discrete T/R modules attached to an aluminum encapsulated APG cold plate). This proposed effort will develop a material system and packaging configuration that can significantly improve the performanceand lower the cost of the thermal management system of current and future phased array radar systems The encapsulated APG material to be demonstrated under this program would have applications in the commercial satellite market, as well as the obvious military and NASA uses. Key potential post application relies heavily on