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  • University of Colorado Wins $1.5 Million for Electronic Cooling Project

University of Colorado Wins $1.5 Million for Electronic Cooling Project

Published: 08 May 2008
 by Staff
BOULDER, CO - A University of Colorado at Boulder research center, along with the Lockheed Martin Corp. has won a $1.5 million contract to develop technologies that promise to significantly improve thermal management in electronic devices, a major problem for consumer and military electronic system design.

The university received an 18-month contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the first phase of a project to replace copper heat pipe, commonly used in electronics and space systems, with a thermal ground plane made of flexible polymer materials.

The idea was developed by assistant professor Ronggui Yang. Using a flexible polymer ground plane reportedly has greatly superior ability to remove the heat generated by consumer electronics, as well systems such as flexible solar cells and batteries, where current processes for heat removal are near limits to further improvement, according to DARPA's director Professor Y.C. Lee.

"Cooling is the No. 1 problem in electronics, and this [technology] represents a total paradigm shift," Lee stated. "Flexible thermal ground planes have 100 times better thermal conductivity than copper and will enable a new generation of high-performance, integrated microelectronic, photonic or microwave systems operating at high power density without constraints resulting from complex thermal management solutions."

Lockheed Martin, a long-time partner in the research, provided the first grant to for an early phase of the project in 2002. "Lockheed Martin considers it a unique opportunity to benefit from CU researchers and incorporate their innovative thermal management solutions into future aerospace systems," said Suraj Rawal, senior manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

Other industry sponsors are being sought to participate in the project.
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