Diamond/Cu composites microchannel heat sink for effective thermal management of SiC power devices
Diamond/Cu composites microchannel heat sink for effective thermal management of SiC power devices
Next-generation SiC power devices are rapidly pushing the limits of thermal management. Higher breakdown voltages, faster switching, and rising power density lead to extreme heat flux—often exceeding 500 W/cm²—while shrinking chip areas intensify junction temperatures and accelerate packaging failures. Bond-wire lift-off, substrate delamination, die-attach cracking, and parallel-chip thermal imbalance have become major barriers to long-term reliability. These challenges underline an urgent need for breakthrough baseplate materials and cooling architectures capable of sustaining high heat loads.
Conventional Cu and Al microchannel heat sinks, fabricated by skiving, are constrained by their intrinsic through-plane thermal resistance and limited thermal conductivity (398 and 270 W/m·K, respectively). As SiC modules continue to scale in current density, these traditional solutions no longer meet system-level thermal requirements.
At DIASEMI, we leverage advanced interface-engineered diamond/Cu composites to overcome these limitations. Diamond/Cu systems offer exceptional potential due to diamond’s ultrahigh thermal conductivity and Cu’s manufacturability, yet their performance has historically been constrained by weak interfacial bonding and high phonon scattering. DIASEMI’s proprietary interface-optimization process—involving controlled metallization and tailored carbide interlayers—achieves stable bonding while maintaining Cu’s intrinsic conductivity. This enables composite thermal conductivities far beyond conventional materials.
In this work, DIASEMI has developed a high-performance diamond/Cu microchannel heat sink by combining:
Over 800 W/m·K diamond/Cu baseplate, enabled by optimized diamond–Cu interfacial engineering
Precision skived Cu microchannels, brazed to the composite via active-metal joining
Low-resistance microchannel architecture, designed for high-heat-flux SiC cooling
This hybrid structure yields a 40% reduction in thermal resistance compared with a pure-Cu heat sink of identical dimensions. When applied directly to SiC devices, the diamond/Cu microchannel heat sink achieves a 12 °C reduction in peak junction temperature under identical flow and power conditions.
These results underscore DIASEMI’s leadership in high-thermal-conductivity composite materials and advanced cooling technologies. Our diamond/Cu baseplates and integrated microchannel solutions enable high-power SiC systems to operate safely at elevated power densities, extending device lifetime and unlocking new performance margins for next-generation power electronics.
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