APPLICATIONS
Cold Plates
Actively cooled cold plates utilize copper or aluminum tubes. They are typically bonded into aluminum plates to reduce weight and optimize thermal conductivity thus minimizing hot spots on the electronics that may be mounted onto the plates. Alternatively, cold plates may have machined passages that need to be covered and sealed to contain the cooling fluid. S-Bond joining is an effective means to join Al-Al, Cu-Cu and Al-Cu cold plates in any combination of materials or design.
S-Bond joining is fluxless, therefore the incompatibly of copper and aluminum fluxes is not a problem and the entrapment of flux in channels does not occur. This eliminates the need for post-joining cleaning and the potential corrosion from residually entrapped flux.
Cold plates now include special structures and materials beyond conventional copper and aluminum plates, fins and tubes. Some cold plates used in cooling specialty electronics are being designed using composites such as Al-SiC or Al-Gr, graphitic foams, pyrolytic graphite, and composites that contain diamond to manage thermal coefficients of expansion. In some electronic package applications, ceramics such as silicon carbide and aluminum nitride are also being used.
S-Bond® solders are unique in their ability to bond and provide a high performance thermal joint between these materials. S-Bond materials offer approximately 10 times the thermal conductivity of most thermal epoxies along with the ability to bond in air without the use of fluxes. The resultant bond also allows for the rework or replacement of damaged parts. Some of the specific applications that can benefit from this are avionics, laser systems, and high performance radar.
S-Bond joining has been used to manufacture a wide range of components, including:
- Vapor Chambers
- Phase Change Thermal Storage Devices
- Radiators
- Heat Pipes
- Cold Plates
The images show various applications where S-Bond has been successfully applied to join several alternative “cold plates”. The top picture shows an Aluminum-Silicon Carbide (Al:SiC) composite actively-cooled cold plate used in high power avionics. The bottom image shows an advanced cold plate where S-Bond joins a machined graphite foam core to the aluminum housing to reduce weight, profile and cooling fluid flow requirements.
Contact Us to review your requirements for making cold plates and to have us quote our materials and services.