Copper, aluminum, and copper-aluminum composite structures are commonly used to create heat sinks for electronics, medical imaging devices and industrial equipment. These are traditionally assembled using flux and conventional solders, while also preplating the aluminum with nickel. Plating can be costly and difficult to schedule with the reduced number of platers and the cost of handling plating wastes. Also, when bonding large flat areas using fluxes, the entrapment of flux and flux residue in the large ( over 1” x 1”) interface areas lead to a reduced bond area and residual flux leach out.
S-Bond joining of heat sinks increases the bond area and lowers the number of steps required for joining. S-Bond® materials join well to copper, aluminum and even composite materials of the same base such as Al:SiC and Cu-G. Frequently, S-Bond offers a lower total end-cost product compared to a conventional joining process since plating and flux clean-up are not required. Depending on the application, this can offer a lower cost-in-use and reduced waste generation compared to conventional processes by eliminating plating baths, flux application, flux fume removal and flux cleaning.
Actively cooled cold plates utilize copper or aluminum tubes. They are typically bonded into aluminum plates to reduce weight and optimize thermal conductivity thus minimizing hot spots on the electronics that may be mounted onto the plates. Alternatively, cold plates may have machined passages that need to be covered and sealed to contain the cooling fluid. S-Bond joining is an effective means to join Al-Al, Cu-Cu and Al-Cu cold plates in any combination of materials or design.
S-Bond joining is fluxless, therefore the incompatibly of copper and aluminum fluxes is not a problem and the entrapment of flux in channels does not occur. This eliminates the need for post-joining cleaning and the potential corrosion from residually entrapped flux.
Contact Us to see how S-Bond can join your heat sinks and or cold plates
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