Development of new Heat-dissipating sheet by Hitachi
Today’s electronic components require heat dissipating materials or otherwise know as Thermal Interface Material (TIM) capable of transferring generated heat by high-tech devices to cooling modules. Normally, the high thermal conductive materials are usually difficult to work with due to their increasing hardness. At the same time more flexible materials offering a good adhesion feature a low thermal conductivity leading researches to seek for a new material that offer a good balance between thermal conductivity and flexibility. For example, the conventional graphite material display a very high thermal conductivity but they suffer from both flexibility and adhesion. In light of this challenge Hitachi Chemical has succeeded in developing a hybrid graphite sheet composed of optimized shaped graphite particles vertically oriented and flexible resins through utilization of company’s technology know how in graphite powder processing techniques and resin synthesis techniques. The newly developed sheet not only has excellent adhesion and flexibility due to its slight tackiness but also it is flame resistance capable of withstanding in electronic devices usage.
Hitachi Chemical has also developed yet another vertically oriented insulating material named “BN sheet”, using boron nitrides instead of graphite. The BN sheet has achieved an extremely high thermal conductivity of 10-20W/mK among insulating system materials.
Possible applications for the newly developed sheet include CPU for personal computers, chipset, main chips in game consoles, and the heat radiating parts of digital video cameras, etc.
Insulating systems using BN sheets are expected to be used in the radiating portion of parts that requires electrical isolation around the perimeter of a circuit. Hitachi Chemical is forecasting a sale of around 2 billion yen by 2012.
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