(October 29, 2008) DURHAM, NC —Time flies when you’re having fun, or when you’re getting a start-up off the ground. From the introduction of an enabling technology, the thermal copper pillar bump (TCPB), through several rounds of funding, award of the North Carolina Green Business Grant, four product launches incorporating said technology, the construction and grand opening of a manufacturing facility, RoHS compliance, and ongoing plans for more, the past year has been peppered with notable events for Nextreme Thermal Solutions. Paul Magill, Ph.D., V.P of marketing and business development at Nextreme, talked to AP about the company’s philisophy and plans for the future.
“Cool what you need to cool, than manage it appropriately,” noted Magill, referring to Nextreme’s philosophy. From this premise, thermal management takes on new significance. Traditional cooling merely shifts heat to the next level without controlling it, whether it is away from the chip, package, board, system, and beyond. As the problem gets passed up, the solution cost does too. Unfortunately, as Magill explained, this ultimately leads to addressing the problem at the most expensive level. Therefore, by only cooling the part that needs to be cooled, heat abatement becomes much less of a problem at the next level. To illustrate his point, Magill cited energy consumption in data centers, where a fair amount of consumption is attributed to cooling the centers themselves. If these data centers applied Nextreme’s approach of cooling hot spots at the chip level with its TCPB technology, he noted, less energy would be required keep the room’s temperature at a level tolerable to humans.
The concept has caught on quickly. Nextreme first introduced the TCPB technology in October, 2007, and has integrated it successfully into several cooling and power generation devices. With the recent creation of the thermal management products business unit, headed up by Jim Mundell, the company intends to focus on thermal management products and aggressively engage with the telecommunications and photonics markets to enable the integration of the OptoCooler product line into optoelectronic devices.
The OptoCooler UPF4 and OptoCooler UPF40, for LED applications, pump heat at rates of .4 and 4 watts/cm2 respectively. Magill demonstrated how cooling the LED increases its light intensity, which translates to less power consumption and improved reliability. Further modifications included development of an array-based assembly process with bump sizes reduced by 75% to address telecom industry needs for higher voltage and lower current. The result is the recently launched OptoCooler HV14, which is a drop-in device that doesn’t require power conversion.
Additionally, Magill announced the company’s latest news that the OptoCooler UPF4 has been integrated successfully into Voxtel Inc.’s line of hermetically packaged avalanche photodiode (APD) receivers (Figure 1). Used for applications in military laser radar and optical communications and commercial telecommunications, the OptoCooler-equipped APDs reportedly offer improved efficiency, less noise, broader spectral and frequency response; improved overall gain, greater reliability, and a longer life span.
“We are pleased that Voxtel has chosen Nextreme’s OptoCooler UPF4 for their thermal management solution.,” said Magill. “This represents further validation of our technology in a new application space and opens up a new channel for our OptoCooler product line.”
In addition to cooling applications, TCPB technology is also making inroads in power generation application as a thermoelectric generator (eTEG). When used in conjunction with a heat source and a heatsink the resulting temperature differential generates power. “eTEGs offer a way to convert waste heat into useful electrical energy,” explained Magill. Potential applications for the eTEG devices include powering gas sensor detectors on gas water heaters, or as include trickle charging of batteries for effluent sensors on smoke stacks.