Heat Sinks

The heat sinks Electronics, passion - Ideas for those who play with electronics (... or work there)

One of the problems often encountered by electronic designer is the need to dissipate the heat generated by the operation of the equipment in order to ensure the best operation. Many modern electronic equipment, they produce heat for many tens of watts, in some cases beyond 100: if this energy is not dispersed in the environment temperature increase easily leads to temporary malfunctions more or less serious or even permanent physical damage.

In this tutorial we present the description of thermal phenomena and techniques used to address the issue, especially from the point of view of those who have to design electronic circuits or use commercial devices.

I will normally refer to semiconductor devices such as transistors, integrated circuits or power processors but the concepts can be extended without major changes to every electrical and electronic equipment. Whenever I was able to have included examples or graphics taken from the technical documentation of the original manufacturers.

The heat sinks

Online resources

Almost all manufacturers of power semiconductors and microprocessors publish application notes relating to management of heat. Please refer to their websites for details on the component you want to use (in particular for thermal data and mounting techniques of the component).

With regard to the behavior Duranti thermal transients, can be consulted AN261 - Designing with thermal Impedence on this website and Static and Transient Thermal Resistance of Advanced Power Modules on this site .

Finally, a source of business addresses and information is (the site of a magazine dedicated to thermal management in electronic devices) or (a magazine devoted to power electronics).

History

The versions with changes limited to the simple correction of typos and the like are identified by the addition of a letter, are not shown in this section.

The heat sinks - Version 2.4e - June 2006
Copyright © 2001-2003-2004-2006, Vincenzo Villa ( )

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and / or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts and with no Back-Cover Texts. . A copy of the license is included in the section Entitled " GNU Free Documentation License ".

(E 'Permission is granted to copy, distribute and / or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License , Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation)

The content of these documents is provided "as is" (AS IS), only educational and without warranty of any kind, either express or implied. In particular, there are believed responsible for any direct or indirect damage caused by the use of this information.

All names of companies and products mentioned herein are property of their respective owners.

Version 2.1 of this tutorial was published in the journal FareELETTRONICA n. 211 (January 2003)