John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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Then I had to determine how we killed it. These particular ones blew up because the unit turned off too quickly. As a result, the periphery of the chips died.

John

I was given a lecture once on the challenges of those hockey puck thyristors used in loony power systems such as converting 1E6VDC into AC supergrid. It seems that things could go very badly wrong very quickly and not leave enough behind to tell you what had failed first. An interesting combination of brute force and very accurate switching control. All of which could be stopped by a stray weasel or dropped sandwich!
 
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The stuff does not flow, there are no ports for fluid motion. It is not used for heat transfer at all.

The difference between this stuff and the standard glob top is; this stuff is clear, it has a much lower durometer value, and it retains stickyness.

John

its a silicon fluid/gel... clear, sticky, messy to touch or work with. yep. Thats what it is. Also used in vibration control and damping apps.


-RNM
 
its a silicon fluid/gel... clear, sticky, messy to touch or work with. yep. Thats what it is. Also used in vibration control and damping apps.


-RNM
Nobody is arguing that.

It is not, however, used for heat transfer as you previously mentioned (in this specific application). Aside from the fact that there is nothing above it to transfer heat to, it is several orders of magnitude lower in thermal conductivity than the alumina the chip is bonded to. (remember, the substrate is DBC, with solder attach above and below.)

It is used for vibration damping of the aluminum bonding wires as I previously mentioned, and it is used as a cover so that the hard clear epoxy added next does not touch the dice or bonds, but rigidly supports the copper straps that were soldered in to support the current.


John
 
Otoh, CERN is considering the use of coolant flow for one of their IGBT applications. I have cautioned them on that because the device is designed as a bottom directed heat transfer path. Trying to use a laminar flow coolant on the die surface can cause cavitation during heat pulses, which will generate hotspots that the semi chip may not be able to overcome. To increase flow to turbulent to aid in thermal transfer and sweep cavitation bubbles can lead to flexure related wirebond failures.

John

Makes me wonder if an lpcvd oxide layer (something low temp) could be designed to keep the boundary layer tripped. There are certainly ways to make local turbulence, or at least flow focusing (we do it a lot in microfluidics) to mitigate cavitation. That'd certainly be a unique application, I'll admit. Taking it that a phase change cooling setup can't be done directly on the die? Generally the best ready to move heat away from a local source.

And, oh the places this thread goes. :)
 
That stuff is collagen and gelatin no fat.

No fat? Where's the fun in that.. :confused:

Hey Scott (or anyone else), I'm looking for a dicing saw. Know who I can talk to?

The object to be diced is a 67mm dia diode brazed to a molybdenum carrier. I need to saw down to just above the braze joint to turn the one diode into a diode array. I need to map the forward voltage across the diode at room, and map the turn on voltage at 4.5K using a bed of nails.

I suspect we'll have to buy one used, as I don't think I can ship it offsite. The diode is kinda, shall we say, "warm". I think it would contaminate the saw permanently, so I'm not sure if any testing labs could do it.

John
 
Makes me wonder if an lpcvd oxide layer (something low temp) could be designed to keep the boundary layer tripped. There are certainly ways to make local turbulence, or at least flow focusing (we do it a lot in microfluidics) to mitigate cavitation. That'd certainly be a unique application, I'll admit. Taking it that a phase change cooling setup can't be done directly on the die? Generally the best ready to move heat away from a local source.

And, oh the places this thread goes. :)

I suspect that phase change might cause pockets of varying temperature. At the macro scale, it's great. But since the silicon is so large but with very very small individual cells, I can see thermal variations across the die causing runaway.

I'd have to review my IGBT parametrics, as I think they are neg coeff like bipolars, as opposed to positive coeff as mosfets are. So I suspect IGBT's will runaway under phase change cooling.

John
 
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