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News and New Products
Nextreme thermoelectric platform aims to cool hot-spots
By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News -- EDN, 1/10/2008
Nextreme Inc is claiming a new thermoelectric platform that can lower heat in specific areas of laser diodes, LEDs, and sensors.
The Research Triangle Park, N.C.-based microscale thermal and power management products maker Wednesday announces the availability of its Ultra-High Packing Fraction OptoCooler module, targeting cooling and temperature control requirements for optoelectronics, electronics, medical, military, and aerospace applications and specifically optimized for laser diode, LED, and advanced sensor products.
In doing so, the start-up aims to solve the continuous design challenge of power leakage and hot spots, leading to uneven temperatures across a chip. Such challenges have lead top industry MPU makers like Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc to move to multi-core processors as they increase performance while reducing footprint. If Nextreme’s thermoelectric platform is successful, it could seemingly offer an alternative route to faster, smaller next-generation processors.
According to the company, the OptoCooler removes a maximum of 420 mW of heat at 25°C ambient in an active footprint of 0.55 mm2 (see images to left and below). As a result, the module can pump a heat density up to 78 W/cm2; at 85°C, these values increase to 610 mW and 112 W/cm2, respectively.
“The OptoCooler module is the industry's first thermoelectric device to offer a heat pumping density in excess of 70 W/cm2, a 10-fold increase in heat pumping capacity over conventional TEC [thermoelectric component] modules,” said Dave Koester, VP of engineering at Nextreme, in a statement. “This is a major breakthrough. For example, this development enables direct cooling of a laser diode on a scale that is similar to the diode itself. This significantly improves efficiency and offers new, integrated packaging options that were previously unavailable.”
Nextreme said that with its thin-film thermal bump technology at its core, the OptoCooler can be integrated directly into electronic and optoelectronic packaging to deliver more than 45°C of cooling for a variety of thermal management applications. The company exampled embedding the module within laser diode packages to control temperatures and maintain proper operating conditions for optimal performance.
Nextreme said it will use the OptoCooler module as the unit building block for all future discrete products. It is manufactured in high volumes with Nextreme’s Thermal Copper Pillar Bump process, a process based on an established electronic packaging approach that scales into large arrays and integrates thin-film thermoelectric material into the solder bumped interconnects that traditionally provide mechanical and electrical functionalities. Unlike conventional solder bumps, Nextreme bumps function as solid-state heat pumps on a microscale. The thermal bumping process can be implemented at the system-level, package-level or wafer-level, and also in discrete modules as demonstrated by the OptoCooler.
OptoCooler modules are available now and can be purchased for $12 in unit volumes of 1000.
Nextreme will be demonstrating the OptoCooler at the San Jose Photonics West conference, January 22 to 24.
In 2004, Nextreme was born out of a research project at not-for-profit laboratory RTI International, which had been developing thermoelectric technology for a decade in collaboration with federal organizations including the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The company has since some $14 million in financial backing, including support from In-Q-Tel, a venture group funded by CIA and the U.S. Intelligence Community.
For more on Nextreme, see “Nextreme seeks to beat heat.”
Perspective and side views of the OptoCooler
