Liquid Metal as a TIM2 Posted by Jordan Ross Monday, July 9th, 2007

I was searching the web and saw a blog entry on Liquid Metal TIM. The web address is http://reviews.pimprig.com/cooling/coollaboratory_liquid_metal.php.

Indium Corporation has been the leader in Metal Thermal Interface Materials for many years, and the demand for materials tends to have its own life pattern. Many years ago there was a large demand for metals that were liquid at room temp such as Indalloy 51. This demand was mostly due to the search for a replacement for Mercury.

This blog entry points out how wierd handling liquid metal can be. And actually the performance of the material turned out to be the second best of all the tested TIMs. This brought up another point. The Bond Line Thickness of the Metallic Thermal Interface Material can actually be too thin for the application. This is what I believe may have happened in this experiment. The Metallic Thermal Interface Material or Liquid Metal was probably about .001 to .002” thick at the interface level. If there were planarity issues on the lid and the heat sink you could have a potential gap of up to .004” to .006”. These voids can cause a major increase in the thermal resistance of the interface, especially when using a metal thermal interface material that is much thinner than the BLT.

Posted by Jordan Ross at 8:15 AM (July 9th, 2007)

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