(June 30, 2008) DURHAM, NC— Nextreme Thermal Solutions, manufacturer of microscale thermal and power management products for the electronics industry, has been awarded a grant from the North Carolina Green Business Fund to enhance the efficiency of thin-film thermoelectrics used to convert waste heat into electricity.
Nextreme’s materials can reportedly be engineered at nano-scale, providing improvement options not available in traditional thermoelectric manufacturing processes. The grant from the North Carolina Green Business Fund will be used to optimize the Nextreme thin-film growth process with the goal of doubling the power output of a single device from 250mW to 500mW.
“We are already demonstrating our devices in a number of specialty applications where heat is available and power is required,” said Nextreme CEO Jesko von Windheim. “Increasing Nextreme’s power conversion efficiency will open up a whole new scale of market opportunities.”
Nextreme’s thin-film thermoelectric products are manufactured in volume with the thermal copper pillar bump process, an established electronic packaging approach that scales well into large arrays. This process integrates thin-film thermoelectric material into the solder bumped interconnects that provide mechanical and electrical connections for today’s high performance/high density integrated circuits. Unlike conventional solder bumps, thermal bumps function as solid-state heat pumps on a microscale. The stack-up of a thermal bump, including the thin-film material, solder and electrical traces, is only 100µm high and has a diameter of µm. The thermal bumping process can be implemented at the package-, die- or wafer-level, and is used today to fabricate Nextreme’s discrete modules.
The North Carolina Green Business Fund, directed by the North Carolina Board of Science and Technology, awards grants to North Carolina organizations in support of competitively assessed projects focused on attracting and leveraging private sector investments, and entrepreneurial growth in environmentally conscious clean technology, renewable energy products and businesses.