Thermal Issues & Liquid Cooling Gaining Importance As high-performance semiconductors generate more heat, and as shrinking circuit sizes accelerate an increase in power density, designers are challenged to develop heat dissipation solutions that are effective, practical and affordable. For some applications - e.g., desktop PCs pushed to run even faster than their designs allow, or systems that need to be cooled quietly for use in living or family rooms, or high-power IGBT modules that might produce 3000W each or more - liquid cooling becomes the heat dissipation method of choice, for its high thermal performance and low noise.

Cold plates are a crucial part of liquid cooling systems, transferring heat from the heat source (CPU or IGBT, for example) into liquid circulating in tubes to a heat exchanger, where a small attached fan blows excess heat outside the system. Current cold plates are designed to be machined and are therefore restricted to very simple fin or channel patterns while also suffering the high costs of machining. In addition, cost pressures sometimes dictate machining cold plates out of aluminum, which is less expensive than copper but is a much worse conductor of heat.

"Amulaire is taking liquid-cooled cold plates to a new generation because we can injection mold in copper, in high volume, essentially any shape or design that can be created in plastic - without machining or soldering," said Paul Hoffman, Amulaire's CEO. "By increasing both the fin density and the complexity of the cold plate design, Amulaire enables even higher thermal performance from liquid cooling systems. Designers can now choose cold plates with the optimal shapes, pin and fin configurations, materials and thermal performance to achieve their specific design goals."

Amulaire's highly flexible metal injection molding processes enable the company to make cold plates with features such as the following:

Pricing With Amulaire's customized products, prices vary widely. As an example, Amulaire's cold plates for high-power IGBTs start at $30 per part for volumes of 5,000. In the PC market, Amulaire will enable the highest-performing cold plate solutions for liquid cooling at retail price points of approximately $50, which is about half the price of comparable solutions available today.

About Amulaire Amulaire Thermal Technology is addressing the most demanding thermal issues facing semiconductor companies, power conversion, computer and telecom manufacturers, and makers of other high-performance semiconductor-based systems. Amulaire offers a unique combination of technical advances, design support and high-volume manufacturing processes that help customers squeeze time and cost from their thermal design process, achieve unprecedented design flexibility and gain greater control over factors such as thermal performance, size, shape and weight in their final products. Amulaire's proprietary manufacturing and assembly processes, including Advanced Molding Technology (AMT), mean that Amulaire can create in metal (including copper), mixed metal and metal/non-metal materials combinations essentially any shape that can be created in plastic. With headquarters in San Diego, California, Amulaire also has a factory, design center and sales office in Taipei, Taiwan.