MIT Researchers Developed New Heat Conducting Polymer Films
Polymers are usually the go-to material for thermal insulation. Think of a silicone oven mitt, or a Styrofoam coffee cup, both manufactured from polymer materials that are excellent at trapping heat. Now MIT engineers have flipped the picture of the standard polymer insulator, by fabricating thin polymer films that conduct heat — an ability normally associated with metals. In experiments, they found the films, which are thinner than plastic wrap, conduct heat better than many metals, including steel and ceramic.
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Intended for High-Performance Computer Chips - Maybe Also Useful for LEDs
The inner workings of high-power electronic devices must remain cool to operate reliably. High internal temperatures can make programs run slower, freeze or shut down. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and The University of Texas, Dallas have collaborated to optimize the crystal-growing process of boron arsenide – a material that has excellent thermal properties and can effectively dissipate the heat generated in electronic devices.
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Engineered “Sand” May Help Cool Electronic Devices and LEDs
Giorgia Tech Research reports that Baratunde Cola, associated professor at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, would like to put sand into your computer and other electronic devices. Not beach sand, but silicon dioxide nanoparticles coated with a high dielectric constant polymer to inexpensively provide improved cooling for increasingly power-hungry electronic devices.
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Litecool Turns LED Packaging on Its Side
Litecool has produced LED packages in a vertical orientation rather than horizontal. This means that the dielectric layers only have a minor impact on the thermal performance of the LED package and allow the heat to escape more effectively through the metallic parts of the package. This has significant benefits for flip-chip packaging where dielectric layers are usually very close to the diode.
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NRL Researchers Discover Novel Material for Cooling of Electronic Devices
A team of theoretical physicists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Boston College has identified cubic boron arsenide as a material with an extraordinarily high thermal conductivity and the potential to transfer heat more effectively from electronic devices than diamond, the best-known thermal conductor to date.
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Nature Materials Study: Boosting Heat Transfer with Nanoglue Might also Improve LED Cooling
A team of interdisciplinary researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a new method for significantly increasing the heat transfer rate across two different materials. Results of the team's study, published in the journal Nature Materials, could enable new advances in cooling computer chips and lighting-emitting diode (LED) devices, collecting solar power, harvesting waste heat, and other applications.
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SWITCH CEO Reveals Best-Kept Secret in LED Lighting
Tracy Bilbrough, CEO of SWITCH Lighting™, the first company to offer a full family of LED replacements to the incandescent A-Lamp, today revealed for the first time key details behind the company’s core technology to a group of industry insiders during a speech at the LED Show. Bilbrough also introduced SWITCH’s new LQD Cooling System™.
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New Thermal Management Product Manufacturing Process Brightens Future of LED Lighting
A new technique for making brighter, longer-lasting LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) has taken the first leap from research laboratory towards the three-billion-US-dollar global market in high-powered lighting. The new manufacturing system, called liquid forging, dramatically improves the way tiny electronic devices keep cool and looks set to revolutionize production of next generation LEDs.
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Diamond Brightens the Performance of Electronic Devices and LEDs
Two new studies performed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have revealed a new pathway for materials scientists to use previously unexplored properties of nanocrystalline-diamond thin films. While the properties of diamond thin films are relatively well-understood, the new discovery could dramatically improve the performance of certain types of integrated circuits by reducing their "thermal budget."
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New Method for Enhancing Thermal Conductivity Could Cool Computer Chips, Lasers, LED's and other Devices
The surprising discovery of a new way to tune and enhance thermal conductivity – a basic property generally considered to be fixed for a given material – gives engineers a new tool for managing thermal effects in smart phones and computers, lasers and a number of other powered devices.
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LED – Cooling and Thermal Management
As we all know, the life span of an LED depends on the semi-conductor material used as well as the current/heat relationship. The light output of the LED becomes weaker and weaker and once it reaches 50% of its initial value, the life expectancy of the LED has, by definition, been reached. A life span of a few hundred and up to 100,000 hours is possible, but only when avoiding high temperatures which drastically reduce the length of the LED’s life.
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Rice Researchers Theorize Acoustic Waves May Cool Microelectronics
Acoustic waves traveling along ribbons of graphene might be just the ticket for removing heat from very tiny electronic devices.
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Nanowire Advances Promise Improved Light-Emitting Diodes and Solar-Energy Generation
A recent advance by ASU researchers in developing nanowires could lead to more efficient photovoltaic cells for generating energy from sunlight, and to better light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that could replace less energy-efficient incandescent light bulbs.
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MIT Team Coaxes Polymers To Line Up, Transforming Them Into Materials That Could Dissipate Heat
MIT team has found a way to transform the most widely used polymer, polyethylene, into a material that conducts heat just as well as most metals, yet remains an electrical insulator.
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Thermally Activated Degradation of Phosphor-Converted White LEDs
The increasing performances and long lifetime of High Brightness LEDs are still limited by the high temperatures involved. This work shows the results of several accelerated lifetime tests on 1W white LEDs. Two different tests have been carried out: a pure thermal storage at different temperatures and an electrical aging obtained by biasing the LEDs. The impact of high temperatures has been evaluated in terms of flux decay, chromatic properties modification, increase of forward voltage and thermal resistance. A picture of the main degradation mechanisms detected has been provided in detail.
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