Nowadays, the world changes at an incredible pace. New electronics come out every day with potential to change the world. With all of these hot electronics, there is usually a requirement for a material to transfer the heat out of the application. Unfortunately, many of the thermally conductive pads that available are binded with silicone. This can be a problem to some applications because silicone can be a real nuisance. These problems mainly have to do with the spread of silicone throughout the application the pad is going into, usually preventing adequate bonding to substrates. Silicone can be incredibly difficult to remove once in an application, even with tough solvents. Silicone bleed can become a huge problem, not allowing bonding, painting, or other coatings to occur. For this reason, Bergquist Company has come up with several alternatives for applications that are sensitive to silicone.

Why are Silicone Thermal Gap Fillers Used?

Silicone Based Gap Filler pads are used because they are super resilient in electronic applications. For example, high heat is a reality of todays electronics, it is why the pads are there in the first place. With GPUs/CPUs temperatures skyrocketing with higher power density, you need something that will hold up to the heat. The second reason silicone-based thermal gap fillers are used is because silicone based gap fillers don’t take a compression set nearly as easily. You want the pads to give modulus back to the heatsink because you don’t want it to completely surrender. This can be a challenge for other materials, silicone is exceptional at providing these two properties, well others struggle to provide them. With that said, there are other chemistries that are used.

Silicone-Free Gap Pads Selection

These pads offered by Bergquist carrying the SF label (for “silicone-free” or non-silicone) are similar to the other Gap Pads in the properties they offer, such as great conformability, thermal conductivity, and electrical isolation. One may think that when giving up the silicone polymer, they would also be giving up all of the properties they like about silicone. While that may be true about some properties such as temperature range, it is not a totally fair characterization. These silicone-free thermal pads still feature great flame resistance (all UL 94V0), and great dielectric strengths. Below are some of the Gap Pads offered by Henkels’ Bergquist, with their different reinforcements, and thermal conductivities.

Non-Silicone/Silicone Free Gap Filler Datasheets

(click to download Datasheets)

More Info on Silicone-Free Thermal Pads

Some applications of these silicone-free products include hard-drive disks, optical applications, laser optics, medical devices, and automotive modules. NEDC converts these silicone-free Gap Pad options through die-cutting and waterjet cutting. In addition, there are thinner silicone free pads, such as Poly-Pad. If you have an application that requires a silicone-free Gap Pad option, or if you have a question about silicone-free materials, please contact sales@nedc.com.

circuit board with many bonds
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