Nextreme Announces New Thermoelectric Platform
Staff -- Semiconductor International, 1/9/2008
Nextreme Thermal Solutions (Durham, N.C.) announced a version of its thin-film thermal bump technology optimized for cooling hot spots in laser diodes, LEDs and sensors.
Unlike conventional solder bumps, Nextreme’s bumps function as microscale solid-state heat pumps. The new thermoelectric module — called the Ultra-High Packing Fraction (UPF) OptoCooler module — is designed to control temperatures in optoelectronics, electronics, medical, military and aerospace applications.
“The OptoCooler module is the industry’s first thermoelectric device to offer a heat pumping density in excess of 70 W/cm2, a 10× increase in heat pumping capacity over conventional TEC modules,” said Dave Koester, vice president of engineering at Nextreme.
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| Nextreme’s OptoCooler cools LEDs and laser diodes. |
The company said the UPF OptoCooler is capable of millisecond response times and broad temperature ranges, able to remove up to 420 mW of heat at 25°C ambient, in an active footprint of 0.55 mm2. The module can pump a heat density up to 78 W/cm2. At 85°C, these values increase to 610 mW and 112 W/cm2, respectively.
The OptoCooler can be integrated directly into electronic and optoelectronic packaging, such as packaged laser diodes used in fiber-based communications systems, which Koester said “enables direct cooling of a laser diode on a scale that is similar to the diode itself. This offers new, integrated packaging options that were previously unavailable.”
Nextreme’s thermal copper pillar bump process incorporates a thin-film thermoelectric material — made of bismuth telluride, at a thickness of a single crystal that is anywhere from 5 to 20 µm — into the solder bumped interconnects that have the traditional mechanical and electrical interconnect functions. The thermal bumping process can be implemented at the system, package or wafer level, and also in discrete modules.
