We’ve talked a bit here at the ATS Thermal Blog about using a PCB as your heat sink. Tony Koryban specifically fielded a question on this topic in fact. Now, one of ATS’s friendly colleagues in the thermal management industry has invented a novel way to use the PCB as the LED heat sink itself.
SinkPAD Corporation, located in Anaheim, has launched it’s technology which:
… conducts heat out of the LED system (LED cooling) by enabling a direct thermal path between the LED and surrounding atmosphere, which eliminates thermal resistance introduced by the dielectric material in a traditional IMS PCB or MCPCB. The SinkPAD design completely removes the substance with the lowest thermal conductivity/highest thermal resistance from the structure. SinkPAD still uses a dielectric, but this dielectric isolates the metal base electrically and leaves it thermally connected. The thermal path should be electrically neutral within the LED package, i.e. Cree XLamp, Luxeon Rebel from Philips Lumiled, PhlatLight from Luminus, in order to solder the LED directly to the SinkPAD.
It’s pretty cool stuff and an exciting development for solid state lighting. You can learn more over at SinkPad’s site at www.sinkpad.com