Electroplating diamond and copper composite -a cost effective way to keep your technology cool
十月13, 2025
Electroplating diamond and copper composite -a cost effective way to keep your technology cool
With the rapid advancement of microelectronics, increasing chip power density and integration have intensified heat generation, posing serious challenges to device reliability. Since component failure rates rise sharply with temperature, efficient heat dissipation has become critical. High-performance thermal management materials, particularly for heat sinks and electronic packaging, are therefore of great interest.
An ideal material should combine high thermal conductivity, low and tunable thermal expansion, low density, and low cost—criteria that conventional materials rarely meet. Metal matrix composites (MMCs) address this limitation. Copper, with its excellent thermal conductivity (386.4 W·m⁻¹·K⁻¹) and low cost, is often used as the matrix, while diamond, with its superior conductivity (>1000 W·m⁻¹·K⁻¹), serves as an ideal reinforcement phase. Traditional fabrication methods such as high-temperature sintering, infiltration, or powder metallurgy require extreme processing conditions (>1000 K, >60 MPa), leading to high energy consumption, interfacial stress, and possible impurity diffusion.
Electroplating offers a low-temperature, low-cost, and scalable alternative compatible with microfabrication. A Cu–diamond composite heat sink prepared by electroplating forms an integrated cooling layer on an aluminum substrate, effectively shortening the heat conduction path. Experiments using an LED heat source showed that, under 1500 mA for 10 minutes, the device achieved a luminous flux of 6768 lm—about 60% higher than the reference—and a reduced operating temperature of 132 °C (vs. 186 °C). The composite exhibited uniform diamond dispersion, strong interfacial bonding, and high thermal conductivity (510 W·m⁻¹·K⁻¹).
Overall, electroplated Cu–diamond composites combine superior thermal performance with manufacturability, providing a practical and scalable solution for high-power electronic thermal management.
