SBIR Phase II: A Novel Heat Dissipation Product for Chip Testing and Internet of Things

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力来自于解决过去几十年半导体经历的晶体管密度显著增加所带来的热挑战。这一趋势推动了从高性能服务器到物联网设备的许多进步。尽管如此，随着芯片技术的每一次进步，芯片冷却的难度不断增加。热界面材料（TIM）市场分为三大部分：聚合物复合材料、金属材料和相变材料。商用碳纳米管（CNT）将创造第四个细分市场，取代现有的TIM，最初在芯片测试市场，最终扩展到服务器、高性能计算和物联网设备。CNT研究人员和小企业在商业TIM产品方面进展甚微。除其他因素外，这种故障是由于在拥挤的低成本TIM空间中定位不佳造成的，目前该空间主要由导热油脂和导热垫主导。迈向可行解决方案的进展在于产品功能与行业痛点的战略一致性。该SBIR第二期项目旨在开发一种方法来扩大生产CNT基TIM的能力，并进一步提高其性能。该SBIR第二期项目的技术目标是：1）扩大CNT TIM制造工艺，以实现200，000平方米的生产能力。每年增加100万件产品，2）将CNT阵列的导电性提高3倍或更多，以促进进入TIM 1和TIM 2市场。该项目最终将开发出世界上第一个实现生产规模CNT基热界面材料的工艺。将通过在专门为CNT生产设计的工具上开发的物理气相沉积和化学气相沉积工艺的组合来实现规模扩大。在这项研究工作的第一阶段，通过与领先的芯片制造商合作，开发并验证了两种针对半导体芯片测试市场的商业产品。除了芯片测试细分市场外，第二阶段还将开发进入TIM 1和物联网市场的产品。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project comes from addressing the thermal challenges brought about by the significant increase in transistor density that semiconductors have experienced over the past few decades. This trend has enabled many advancements ranging from high performance servers to Internet of Things devices. Still, with every advance in chip technology, the difficulty of chip cooling continues to increase. Three major thermal interface material (TIM) market segments exist: polymer composites, metallic materials and phase-change materials. Commercial carbon nanotubes (CNTs) will create a fourth market segment that will supplant existing TIMs, initially in the chip testing market and eventually extending into servers, high performance computing and Internet of Things devices. CNT researchers and small businesses have made little progress towards a commercial TIM product. Among other factors, this failure is driven by poor positioning in the crowded low-cost TIM space, which is currently dominated by thermal greases and pads. Progress towards a viable solution lies in the strategic alignment of product features with industry pain points. This Phase II SBIR aims to develop a means to scale the ability to produce CNT based TIMs as well as to further improve their performance.The technical objectives of this SBIR Phase II project are to: 1) scale up of the CNT TIM manufacturing process to achieve a production capacity of 200,000 sq. in of product annually and to 2) enhance the conductivity of the CNT array by a factor of 3x or more to facilitate entry into the TIM1 and TIM2 market. This project will ultimately develop processes that will translate into achieving production scale CNT based thermal interface materials for the first time in the world. Scale up will be achieved through a combination of physical vapor deposition and chemical vapor deposition processes developed on tools designed specifically for CNT production. In Phase I of this research effort, two commercial products aimed at the semiconductor chip testing market were developed and validated through collaboration with leading chip manufacturers. In addition to the chip testing market segment, in Phase II products will be developed for entry into the TIM1 and Internet of Things markets.