Heat Sinks

Heat sinks have historically been the PCB workhorse for thermal management. They help keep devices at temperatures below their specified maximum operating temperature. There are many versions, different designs and various ways of optimizing heat sinks. Over time, the technology has progressed with the use of new materials. For example, carbon fiber and boron nitride are recent materials applied to heat sinks. High thermal conductivity fiber spreads heat well at 800 watt per meter Kelvin (W/m-K) in the direction of the fiber. However, at 0.5 W/m-K, it doesnt spread heat up and down very well.

Developers have applied boron nitride crystals as a way to efficiently move heat from one fiber ply to the next. These crystals are used to salt carbon fiber sheets or prepregs. Two or more sheets are then laminated together to form the heat sink material, and throughput for up-down directions has been improved from 0.5 to about 4 W/m-K.

Due to their high cost, however, these materials will likely find limited use in future PCB fabrication and may not replace aluminum heat sinks in many applications. Still, carbon fiber heat sinks may best be used in systems that dont use air-cooling. These may include aircraft, missile and spacecraft components, automobiles, high-end computers and medical equipment.

On the other hand, fin-based aluminum or copper heat sinks find greater acceptance in many applications due to their low cost and ideal thermal dissipation characteristics (Figure 1). Aluminum has a highly acceptable 205 W/m-K thermal conductivity, while copper is about twice as high at about 400 W/m-K. Aluminum heat sinks are inexpensive; copper ones cost more and they weigh more. Consequently, aluminum gets the nod for most cost-effective applications, and copper is used in selected ones where cost isnt an issue.

Most heat sinks are finned to provide a simple way of increasing surface area for heat radiation and conduction. Some vendors claim their special aluminum fin material is 15 percent more conductive than fin material used in competitive heat sinks. They assert the overall performance of the bonded fin part increases and compensates for the minor conductivity loss from an epoxy joint.

Carbon Composite Material

The industry is creating a buzz over the new carbon composite material that is thermally and electrically conductive and primarily aimed at a PCBs ground planes. Its objective is to improve in plane thermal conductivity with its 3 to 6 parts per million per degree centigrade (ppm/C) CTE. It compares favorably to traditional epoxy-glass and polyimide-glass-based materials with in-plane CTEs ranging from 15 to 20 ppm/C.

This type of material has multiple benefits. For thermal conductivity, it is ideal for conduction cooling and reducing PCB hot spots. Its low CTE permits the PCB designer to tailor the PCBs CTE to match that of ceramic or flip chip packaging. Carbon composite material is rigid, thus eliminating the need for stiffeners. Lastly, it is as light in weight as typical glass fiber composite material.

Carbon composite material also performs as a built-in heat spreader and moves heat away from a hot spot to colder areas of the PCB. Since it is located close to the PCBs surfaces, there is a short thermal path from the heat source to this material. The material then enables heat to move from the heat source to the nearest carbon composite layer and from there to the chassis via mounting holes or wedge locks.

Figure 2 shows the stack-up of two different boards. One is based on two-core construction and the other on three-core. Layers number 2 and 9 in the two-core construction are thermally conductive layers using carbon composite material. In the three-core construction board, layers number 3, 8 and a middle one designated electrically non-functional (NF) use carbon composite material and serve as thermally conductive layers for heat dissipation.

If carbon composite material is implemented as multicore, it effectively reduces PCB hot spots by two to three times compared to its use as a single core. Heat is thus dissipated not only from the component and solder sides, but also through those layers discussed above. Instead of the conventional two avenues with traditional in-plane material, heat is now dissipated through four different paths. The material can also be used to augment PCB mounting holes to further dissipate heat from the PCB surface through to the chassis to the ambient. It can also be used for thermal vias to re-direct heat from hot spots to cooler PCB areas. Here, the material is used to plate vias shut, thus creating more volume to dissipate heat. Instead of leaving an air gap in between, it is closed with a thermally conductive material, allowing heat to dissipate from the top of the PCB to the bottom. The result is a 5% - 10% greater PCB area dedicated to heat dissipation. Further, carbon composite-based thermal vias can be used in conjunction with edge plating, discussed below, to increase heat dissipation even more.

Special casing or enclosure materials are complementing those used in PCBs to further manage heat dissipation. In some instances, for various reasons, PCB designers dont factor system enclosure materials into an overall thermal management strategy. However, with todays drive to portable electronics and more powerful chips, it is vital for EMS providers to forge all thermal aspects of an OEMs design. Thermoplastic materials represent a forerunner in this respect. They are making significant headway by replacing or augmenting metal casings for small and increasingly thermally intense cell phones, notebooks and other portable gear. Recently, various fillers have been used to further improve thermoplastics with thermal conductivities in the highly acceptable area of 1 to 10 W/mK. The three general classes of filler used are carbon, metallic and ceramic.

Edge Plating
Some PCB applications are highly populated with components that generate high voltage or high current. An effective thermal management technique is to connect them to the outside chassis acting as ground. In these cases, edge plating provides the best way to manage thermal issues. As shown in Figure 3, the PCBs edge is connected through the chassis, thus the entire chassis is used as ground, as well as a means to dissipate heat. The larger the area of edge plating, the greater will be the heat dissipation. Edge plating, while highly effective for dissipating heat, is limited to certain military, aerospace and industrial applications that permit a large chassis to be used as ground. Moreover, edge plating calls for experienced PCB fabricators who are equipped to implement special techniques to plate a PCBs edge.

Copper Thieving
Aside from these new methods and materials, copper thieving is a well-proven PCB thermal management technique. Thieving adds copper to board sections sparsely populated with copper as a way to dissipate heat, besides balancing the surface density. Its use is limited to large boards with considerable copper density on one side and minimal on the other. An example is a board with analog circuitry and considerable copper on one side of the PCB and digital ICs and little copper on the other side.

Adding copper to the digital side dissipates heat more effectively. For example, Figure 4 shows thieving applied to such a PCB. In this instance heat dissipation increased by 20% to 25% after thieving was applied.

Implementing thicker copper traces on the PCB is another proven technique to spread and dissipate heat. In these cases, regular 6 mil traces are increased to 8 - 10 mil traces, for example, by depositing larger amounts of copper. This technique is highly acceptable in applications that dont have impedance requirements. Copper traces on some applications can go even thicker, for instance, 5 mil traces can be doubled to 10 mils as long as the PCB application allows for it and there are no impedance control restrictions.

Finally, the seasoned PCB designer investigates even the least likely candidates to squeeze out as much heat as possible. Two examples are tantalum capacitors and mounting holes. A tantalum capacitor has resin fused through the lead frame that conducts and dissipates heat. The designer also takes advantage of the mounting holes on the board for heat spreading and dissipation. Thats done by using the mounting screws so that the heat on these outer planes can be spread around to the outer casing or chassis. This provides a larger surface area for heat dissipation into the ambient.