Internal structure of a Therma-Base™ Heat Sink

Therma-Base™ Heat Sink

Today's Challenge: More Power in Smaller Packages

Therma-Base™ is a vapor spreader used as the base of a heat sink.

As electronic devices decrease in size and increase in power, the required heat sinks have grown to be larger than the devices. Heat sinks are most efficient when there is a uniform heat flux applied over the entire base. "Spreading resistance"1 occurs when a heat sink with a large baseplate area is attached to a heat source of a smaller footprint area. The higher the power, the smaller the source, and the farther the source is off-center, the greater the thermal spreading resistance as shown below.

http://www.thermacore.com*

Last Revision: January 25, 2002

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Curator: Wayne A. Wong
  NASA Official Responsible For Content:  Richard K. Shaltens
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Last Updated: 07/31/2002