By Josh Perry, Editor
[email protected]

Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc. (ATS), a leading-edge thermal engineering and manufacturing company focused on the thermal management of electronics, recently published an article that explained the insignificant impact that wrinkles or dents in phase-change material (PCM) have on the thermal performance of a heat sink.

ATS heat sinks come with Chomerics T766 phase-change material standard.
(Advanced Thermal Solutions, Inc.)

The article based its conclusions on research published by Parker Chomerics on its Thermflow™ T766 thermal interface material (TIM), which comes standard on all ATS heat sinks.

Thermflow™ comes with a think metal liner that should not be removed before use. Engineers have noticed that sometimes there are small dents or wrinkles in the liner and have questioned whether this will negatively impact the thermal performance.

According to the article, “When pressure is applied, the phase-change material (and the metal foil) conform to both surfaces, completely removing air gaps or voids to maximize heat sink performance. The phase-change material will ‘attain minimum bond-line thickness’ and ‘maximum surface wetting,’ according to information from Chomerics, to limit the thermal resistance path and ensure almost no thermal contact resistance between the device being cooled and the heat sink.”

The foil was tested under different conditions, such as not wrinkled, lightly wrinkled, moderately wrinkled and severely wrinkled, and at different psi to see what the impact on thermal impedance would be.

Even when the foil was wrinkled beyond typical handling conditions, the result was only 1.0°C change in the thermal impedance. That number was even lower (0.5°C) for severe dents. When folds were tested, it was determined that a fold of up to 5% of the foil’s area would have a negligible impact on thermal performance. A large fold was the only condition that had a significant change in thermal impedance.

Read the full article at http://bit.ly/2yKkG9V.

Learn more about the importance of thermal interface material in the video below: