AI thermal pad chip
Customers are looking for the best thermal performance when it comes to thermal interface materials. To get the best thermal performance, in my opinion in most cases, you don’t want to rely on much external pressure to get there. For that reason, we thought we’d write a blog on some pads that typically will compress without much pressure, and provide some great thermal performance in the process. These low pressure thermal pads are good for a number of applications.
Why is High Deflection, Low Pressure Important?
Laird/DuPont offers a variety of low pressure thermal pads that are categorized as “high-deflection”. These pads are known as TFlex HD90000, TFlex HD80000, TFlex HD7.5, TFlex 700, Tflex HD300TG, and TFlex HD300. What does this mean? It means that the pad has a low amount of pressure required to get the pad to be at a good performance level. We have discussed before the importance of a pad to deflect to be able to provide good thermal performance. Here is the challenge with thermal pads: Filling the pad with hard fillers such as ceramic, or diamond, or whatever magic dust makes the pad brittle. When the pad becomes brittle, it becomes very hard to extract good thermal performance because you are required to put a significant amount of pressure on the pad to extract said performance. This can cause two problems:
- The pad, and accompanying pressure will smash delicate components on the board such as SMD (surface mount devices) components. This can be a critical failure point in application.
- The pad can suffer itself because so much pressure is put on it from batch to batch, it can crack under the pressure. It may not perform as intended because the pad breaking can cause air gaps. In addition, it can flow out too much if it depends on external pressure to achieve proper wet-out.
With these low pressure thermal pads, most of the compression you would ever want out of the pad is achieved within 20 psi. For example, we included the TFlex HD90000 compression/deflection chart here, and most of the deflection is easily achieved within 20 psi.
low pressure thermal pads
TFlex HD Product Performance/Availability
TFlex HD90000 – 7.5 W/m-K- .040”-0.200” available thicknesses, HD91000, HD91250, HD91500, HD91750, HD92000, HD92250, HD92500, HD92750, HD93000, HD93250, HD93500, HD93750, HD94000, HD94250, HD94500, HD94750, HD95000
TFlex HD7.5 – 7.5 W/m-K- .040”- .200” available thicknesses
TFlex HD80000- 6 W/m-K – .040”-0.200” available thicknesses, HD81000, HD81250, HD81500, HD81750, HD82000, HD82250, HD82500, HD82750, HD83000, HD83250, HD83500, HD83750, HD84000, HD84250, HD84500, HD84750, HD50000
TFlex HD700- 5 W/m-K- .020”- .200” available thicknesses, HD720, HD740, HD780, HD7100, HD7140, HD7200
TFlex HD300TG- 2.7 W/m-K -0.020”-.200” available thicknesses
TFlex HD300- 2.7 W/m-K -0.020”-.200” available thicknesses, HD340, HD360, HD380, HD3100
Note: CoolZorb™ HD500 is a high-deflection pad too with nearly double the compression of CoolZorb™ 500 under the same pressure. This pad deflects 50% deflection at 40 psi.
Applications for Thermal Interface Pads
-Artificial Intelligence/CPUs
-Power Supplies
More Information on TFlex/Thermal Pads
NEDC provides thermal pad die cutting services for customers. For more information on high deflection thermal pads or if you have an application that you believe could benefit from a high deflection thermal pad, please contact sales@nedc.com.