Dow Corning Introduces Thermal Interface Material
Dow Corning Corp. said a thermally conductive compound, developed for use in Intel's latest mobile processor, is now commercially available. The compound, applied between a chip and its heat sink to carry away heat, can also be used for automotive power devices, LEDs, FPDs and other heat-sensitive systems.
Staff -- Semiconductor International, 8/20/2008
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The Dow Corning Electronics Group (Midland, Mich.) said it is now selling a thermally conductive compound developed for use with Intel Corp.’s newest mobile microprocessor, the Core2 Extreme mobile processor. The thermal interface material (TIM) is applied between a microprocessor and its heat sink to carry away heat.
Dow Corning said its thermally conductive compound was compared with materials from competing suppliers at Intel, with extensive thermal stress evaluations. The company said that its materials “exhibited sufficient reliability after repeated power cycling, while other thermal greases suffered severe degradation.” The thermal grease exhibited “the best initial thermal resistance values of any competitor, including exceptional resistance to pump-out, the tendency of some TIMs to migrate from their usage area after repeated thermal expansion cycles.”
Besides microprocessors, graphics processors and other critical computing components, Dow Corning is targeting emerging thermal materials markets, including power ICs, LEDs, FPDs and a variety of communication and automotive products. Andrew Lovell, a manager of Dow Corning’s Thermal Materials Group, said the TC-5688 compound offers extremely low thermal resistance at 0.05°C-cm2/W and a high level of thermal conductivity at 5.67 W/m·K.
“We have been developing a broad portfolio of thermal materials in recent years, and the TC-5688 compound significantly strengthens our product offerings for the rapidly growing mobile PC market,” Lovell said. The compound “excels in real-world applications involving non-uniform substrates and varying bond line thicknesses,” he said.
At the Intel Developer Forum being held this week in San Francisco, Dadi Perlmutter, general manager of Intel’s mobility group, said that mobile processors are likely to overtake shipments of desktop processors in 2009 or 2010. Mobile processor shipments are headed toward a billion units annually as ultramobile “netbooks” gain a hold in the marketplace, Perlmutter said.
| Intel executives, speaking at the Intel Developer Forum, predicted that mobile processor shipments will exceed desktop processors in the next year or two. |
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