Thin Thermally Efficient ICECool Defense Semiconductor Power Amplifiers

Abstract Traditional power electronics for military and fast computing applications are bulky and heavy. The “mechanical design” of electronic structure and “materials” of construction of the components have limitations in performance under very high temperature conditions. The major concern here is “thermal management.” To be more specific, this refers to removal of high-concentration hotspot heat flux >5 kW/cm2, background heat flux >1 kW/cm2, and “miniaturization” of device within a substrate thickness of <100 μm. We report on the novel applications of contact-based thermoelectric cooling (TEC) to successful implementations of high-conductivity materials - diamond substrate grown on gallium nitride (GaN)/AlGaN transistors to keep the hotspot temperature rise of device below 5 K. The requirement for smarter and faster functionality along with a compact design is considered here. These efforts have focused on the removal of higher levels of heat flux, heat transfer across interface of junction and substr...